Video Editing DREAM MACHINE? M1 Max VS Mac Pro in DaVinci Resolve

If you paid attention to computers in this past  year and you cut videos every day like i do   i bet you're tired of hearing how great the  new apple silicon m1 chip is when you just knew   it didn't have enough ram or even  enough ports to get any real work done   but now the m1 pro and the m1 max computers are  out with literally everything we could have hoped   for in a laptop for video editing. We already  know it has excellent geeky benchmarks but what   i want to know is if this m1 max macbook pro  can replace the need for a dedicated mac pro   cheese grater which costs over twice the price  therefore today we're cutting to the chase with   seven real world video editing tests in davinci  resolve comparing the m1 max against the mac pro   this 14 inch m1 max macbook pro has a 10 core  cpu a 24 core gpu a 2 terabyte blazing fast   internal ssd and the maxed out 64 gigabytes  of unified memory davinci resolve can use that   memory reducing the need to swap memory across  to the ssd the 2019 mac pro over here has a   3.3 gigahertz 12 core intel xeon processor  with an amd radeon pro 580 x 8 gigabyte gpu   also with a two terabyte internal system drive  and a whopping 96 gigabytes of ddr4 memory   that machine's a beast and it's got the price  tag to show for it oh and just for context and   perspective here i've been editing professionally  for nearly 20 years doing commercial work for one   of the top global ad agencies in the world and  also in the nonprofit space for a large house   of worship here in colorado i also spent several  years as a post-production director of technology   and the point is is that i've loved computers  ever since i built my first pc as a teenager   with my dad and cutting video is not  just my career it's still my passion   now on to the test. To even the playing field  all the tests use the same samsung t7 nvme ssd   this drive is what i recommend most video editors  use if you don't already have an external sandisk   drive and hit start and it looks like we're  about 750 megabytes per second both on read   and for write next i want to find out how  fast the drive inside the macbook pro is and holy cow oh my gosh over 6 000 and  five thousand megabytes per second   and now we want to see how fast the  internal drives are on the mac pro   all right not so bad i can work with that so  between two thousand and twenty eight hundred   megabytes per second when you're the dit on set or  you sit back at your desk with an sd card you need   to get those video files off the card and the new  mac pro has a uh s2 card slot for that so for the   laptop we're going to use the built-in slot and  for the mac pro we're going to use my favorite   four slot sd card reader from startech this thing  is so good i should probably do a video on it i've   got almost exactly 50 gigabytes of real footage  here on the sony v90 uhs2 card which i'm going   to plug right into the macbook pro and we're going  to see how long it takes to copy on both machines   straight over to the internal drive so moving  it to here which is on the desktop and start boom 2 minutes and 48 seconds so the copy  to the mac pro is actually faster than over   to the macbook pro with the internal reader  my hunch is that it's actually the startech   um uhs2 card reader here that is outperforming  the internal one here on the macbook pro but   that was pretty interesting it's still pretty fast  either way when you're talking about 50 gigabytes now we get to see what the built-in media  engine with multiple prores accelerators   and dedicated hardware for h.264 and h.265 is  all about my biggest question for this test is   how does the timeline actually feel when i push  play does it play does it respond when i trim   does it trim so i put together timeline with  a variety of notoriously hard to play back   footage consisting of sony xavc hs h.265  10bit 422 gopro h265 and h264 dji drone   footage blackmagic raw and even the troublesome  canon r5 10-bit h265 footage surprisingly for   the first time in my life i've seen this  all play back perfectly it's like a miracle   in fact i tried playing back four h.265 clips  together in a multi-cam and it wasn't a problem   smooth as silk the only time i dropped frames  with the macbook pro was trying to play back a   9 camera angle multi-cam with 4k h265 footage that  didn't work and everything just feels snappy and   responsive when i'm trimming and scrubbing  okay now i'm looking at the mac pro to see   how that performs we're also at 3840 by 2160 on  the timeline hit home let's just take l to play   and right off the bat as soon as i hit play my  frame rate drops but once it gets going it does   okay see what i like to do is i like to push play  and i like it to start playing right when i push   play not four seconds after and then look at this  kind of playback 6.7 frames per second on a mac   pro four angles of multi-cam doesn't work there's  no way it can't do it it's terrible look at that   it's just it feels sticky that's what it feels it  feels really sticky it's not super super pleasant   i'm curious if the new davinci resolve speed  editor is also responsive so let's take a look   at the same timeline using only the speed editor  to navigate and trim in the cut page i kind of   expected this but the search dial on the speed  editor in the cut page feels really smooth on the   m1 max macbook pro it's almost as if the footage  was already prores jog and scroll work great   now the shuttle button is still pretty touchy but  it could be manageable with some finesse although   i pretty much avoid using shuttle control it's  really not the easiest control on the speed editor   next i just want to try how the speed editor works  with the mac pro with this highly compressed and   high rest footage i don't feel like it's going  to be a whole lot better than the keyboard was   oh boy this really jumps all over the place let me  go to the cut page and see if that's any different so the cut page scroll definitely seems smoother  right there then the edit page if we go to the   edit page it jumps all over the place which is  kind of interesting yeah it's very very stuttery   here in the edit page this is on the mac pro  but if i jump over shift three to get over here   my thumbnails are not updating but at least   the search dial is moving really nice  and smooth you can see right there   so again this is h.265 4k stuff so this this  shouldn't play back this is like a technological   marvel that even kind of works but um you know  we saw much better performance on the macbook pro   that motion on these clips it is it's terrible  it's it's pretty bad i probably wouldn't use   i wouldn't use the speed editor in the edit page  for this specific project unless i had transcoded   the footage oh hey real quick while we're on  the topic of the speed editor i want to welcome   you if you're new here because i have a lot of  helpful tutorials on resolve and the speed editor   i'm chadwick and this is creative video tips which  is here to help you craft stories that make a   difference and stand out so if you're into that  subscribe right now because it's free and maybe   also hit that bell it could be a good deed for the  day making proxies has been part of my workflow   ever since hd became a thing and it's just one of  those annoying things where you pay now or you pay   later with your time and in davinci resolve it  ties up the application so you can't do anything   else so let's figure out how long it takes to  make some prores proxy at 1080p on both machines   and we're transcoding 26 minutes of 4k footage  for the first time i can start to hear fans   starting to turn on here on the the m1 max macbook  pro and stop three minutes 17 seconds for the m1   max macbook pro and for the expensive mac pro  i had to keep waiting and waiting and waiting   and done seven minutes and 56 seconds we'll give  it it could be 57 we'll call it seven minutes and   56 seconds it took on the mac pro to make proxies  where we were at three minutes and 17 seconds on   the macbook pro 317 versus 756. that is insane the  difference just to make prores proxy at 1080p wow   the uh prores accelerators that are in that thing  they exist apparently they're doing their job   render cache helps you smooth your playback when  you have complicated composites or effects but   it often needs to recache with the simplest  trim on the timeline so let's see how fast   rendering out a preview of a motion vfx title is  now let's drag the all-important thumbs up okay   and the bell down because those are good things  to do right now and this test is on 10 seconds   of 4k footage you can see our playback isn't  so great right now because it needs to render   so we're going to select the clips with user  cache on and use render cache color output   and through the magic of editing the m1 max  wins again at 33 seconds so 43 seconds for   the mac pro and look it's still not even after  render caching it it's still not playing great   look at that so it's 43 seconds to draw render  cache on the mac pro and it didn't even work   all that good at least at 4k let's let's  see what it looks like at 1080. and just   so you know the laptop played 4k render cache no  problem okay it looks like it can playback 1080   with the the render cache fine it just  it was struggling with 4k footage so the export render test is the classic youtube  computer benchmark and while this doesn't matter   too much for short videos if you create hour-long  content for sunday mornings this could be a huge   benefit to making sure you can wrap things up  to watch that football game in the afternoon   i love that glitchy effect so each of this  is gonna be a quick export the first one is   prores and it's a one minute timeline and it's  all the footage we've been working with and go   and this is where things really get crazy look at  that 15 seconds on the m1 max versus 42 seconds   on the mac pro for the one minute export now we're  gonna export the exact same timeline with h.265 on   both machines to see how that does and go i think  it might be in love with this new laptop for real   holy smokes 17 seconds not bad at all  so 39 seconds for h.265 not too bad   it's actually faster to export the h.265 than  it was the prores which is kind of interesting   and go oh yeah this is fast 17 seconds m1  max versus 61 on the mac pro this is just   wow overall i'd say playback feel is what has sold  me on the m1 max chip so much of video editing is   about feeling and rhythm and touch so you can  craft that perfect moment and evoke emotions   if a system's not responsive and you can't work  faster than you can think then it just bogs you   down it can be a drag it doesn't just waste time  which is money but it also kills your creativity   that being said you can still edit anything on  any old computer with proxy files but for the   first time in my editing career since trying to  edit with highly compressed high resolution codecs   i feel like this machine over here with davinci  resolve can handle anything i needed to without   even needing to create those proxy files that's  dailies for those of you in la or rushes if you're   across the pond i know you and i see you in the  comments i also won't feel tied down to a specific   edit bay with the new macbook i love to camp in  my winnebago travel trailer in the summer so now   we can keep creating more creative video tips  out on the road and in the mountains speaking   of those tips if you want to learn more about  using davinci resolve i suggest you click this   playlist right here and because there's so much  more to learn i will see you in that next video

Channel: Creative Video Tips

Views: 15,788

Keywords: Best Video Editing Computer, Replace Mac Pro, M1 Max Macbook Pro, M1 Max Macbook Pro vs Mac Pro, Video Editing Dream Machine, M1 Max vs Mac Pro, mac pro intel vs m1, video editing speed comparison, apple m1 chip, apple m1 max chip, apple silicon, m1 max, editing on m1 max macbook, davinci resolve 17, 10 bit video editing, apple silicon macbook pro, new macbook pro 2021, speed test, edit 8k video, macbook pro m1 max vs mac pro, macbook pro m1 max vs m1 pro, resolve m1 speed

Id: PJMfX9Kdmts

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/CreativeVideoTips]

Does the new M1 Max MacBook Pro editing performance crush the big and pricey Mac Pro? Here are 7 actual post-production workflow tests to determine which machine is best for video editing, especially in DaVinci Resolve. It's not just about speed tests.

[u/SeaRefractor]

Love your channel! Thank you for the great content you've been producing and the tutorials as well.

I'd gone with the binned M1 Max (24-core GPU) to get the extra ProRes core. I have the speed editor as well (plus extra Studio license due to bundle when I'd ordered it). With the new system super smooth. I've tried both Bluetooth and USB-C on the editor, impressed with that edit hardware and I cannot really see a difference between using the editor Bluetooth or not. BlackMagic Design did a great job with that editor hardware.

[u/techanim]

I’m seeing similar improvements over my custom built PC system. Being able to smoothly scrub through my a7s3 h.265 footage without transcoding is a life-changing savings in time and storage space.

[u/bendrissa]

Hi CVT. Your tutorials are really well presented. I wonder if you'd consider doing videos that cover creative tips for editing and post-production, rather than just the software and equipment? I understand (or think I understand) the pressure for YouTubers to attach their work to products, but I'd love to see your take on taste, rhythm and pace in editing, cutting patterns, relationship with clients, managing the review process, etc. I think it would be really helpful, especially for younger aspiring editors, to have resources that focus less on software knowledge and more on broader skills.

[u/Vanpom]

Can't watch this.

I'm still waiting for mine to get shipped, still 10 days away according to Apple .........

[u/Soma-AL]

Low key, he looks like StoneMountain64