By what factor does adding the maximum level of color to a video increase its size?

When color is added to a video, it fundamentally changes the amount of data that needs to be processed and stored. In a typical video signal, brightness information (luma) and color information (chroma) are treated separately. When using a system that incorporates the maximum level of color, such as in a full-color format, the data for color can significantly increase the file size due to the additional information required to represent each color channel.

In common video formats, one way to think about this increase in size is through the use of different color representations. For instance, a grayscale video only needs one channel for luma, whereas a full-color video uses three channels (often referred to as RGB: red, green, and blue). This tri-channel system can mean that for every pixel, the amount of data increases significantly.

The factor of increase, when maximizing color in a video, is often calculated based on these channels. In many applications, adding color can increase the size by a factor of 24, as each pixel may require three times as much data (for RGB) along with additional data related to encoding and other necessary parameters, leading the overall increment to the size being understood as a multiplication of 8 bits per channel by three channels for