iPhone ProRes Log fills your Mac: how to manage the files

How big iPhone ProRes Log really is

Since the iPhone 15 Pro you can shoot ProRes in Apple Log, and the footage is genuinely cinema grade. The cost shows up fast on storage. Apple puts a one minute 10-bit ProRes clip at roughly 1.7 GB in 1080p and about 6 GB in 4K. A single morning of shooting can swallow tens of gigabytes, and the phone or the Mac fills up before the project even starts.

That number is not a bug, it is the point of ProRes. The codec keeps a very light compression so every frame stays clean for grading, which means large files by design. Plan for it up front rather than discover it when the disk is full.

Why Log pushes the size up

Apple Log records a flat, wide dynamic range image so you can grade it later. It is not meant to look good straight out of the camera, it is meant to hold detail in highlights and shadows. Paired with ProRes, you get maximum flexibility and maximum weight. Higher frame rates add more frames per second to store, so a 4K 60 clip is heavier than the same shot at 4K 30.

Record to an external SSD

The iPhone 15 Pro and newer Pro models record ProRes directly to a USB-C external SSD. This matters most on the 128 GB model, where Apple caps internal ProRes recording at 1080p 30, so you need an external drive to capture 4K ProRes at all. The 256 GB and larger models, and the Pro Max, can record 4K ProRes internally, but they still fill quickly.

1. Connect a USB-C SSD to the iPhone and select it as the recording destination in the Camera settings.
2. Use a quality cable and a drive fast enough for sustained writes, since ProRes is a constant high bitrate.
3. Keep an eye on remaining space during long takes so you are not cut off mid-shot.

Offload after every shoot

The surest way to lose footage is to shoot onto a drive and never clear it. After each shoot, copy the files to your working storage, organize them by date or project, and verify the copies open before you erase the source. A simple, repeated routine beats a clever one you forget under deadline.

Grading Apple Log

Apple publishes a Log LUT that maps the flat image back to a standard look. You can apply it as a starting point in Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro, then grade from there, or ignore it and grade the Log directly. Either way the heavy originals sit on your drive the whole time you cut, which is the part worth solving.

Keep your Mac free with Sanbila

Sanbila is desktop software with cloud storage built for editing. Once a shoot is done, you send the contents of the SSD to Sanbila, where the originals live in the cloud. You then edit on light proxies, so your Mac carries small files instead of the full ProRes, or you stream the originals when you need full quality. The choice is made per file, not per project.

That keeps your working drive breathing room for the edit itself, while the masters stay safe in the cloud with a backup. To size a shoot before you film it, the storage calculator gives you gigabytes per minute by codec and resolution.