Upgrading to Mac Studio Question

thefilmaddict

thefilmaddict

Veteran
I currently use an iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019 computer with a 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, 128 GB of Memory and a Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB for graphics.



I've used it a lot to edit with Avid & Adobe Premiere Pro and I am thinking of upgrading it to a Mac Studio.



What's the ideal configuration and will I notice better performance? I assume yes.



By the way, I do a ton of broadcast work. A lot of it is 1080p still, but I often have to edit with 4K and sometimes 8K footage (occasionally red raw footage, but mostly a lot of Arri cams). Often, I have to start and finish the project, including the audio mix and always the color correction. Out of house Protools session are pretty rare with my tight turnaround times.


Thanks!
 
You left out one important detail . . . why upgrade? What is the motivation? If you're not experiencing performance issues then just stick with what you already have. When it comes time to upgrade it should be obvious and you won't have to ask others. I'm still happily working on a 2018 MacBook Pro with Resolve, Premiere, etc. No issues.

Well, almost no issues. The whole thing comes to a screeching halt with Canon H.265 codecs. But I hear even people with M1 Macs can't get that awful codec to playback smoothly. Fortunately that was a one-off experience and I won't have to deal with it again.

It does make you wonder, though, why Canon and other manufacturers have adopted the H.265 codecs on their cacmeras. Who wants it? Memory cards are dirt cheap so why add unnecessary levels of compression that bring even the best computers to their knees in post? I must be missing something.
 
Do you have a Canon h.265 file to share? I'm curious to see if my M1 Max will play it, since it handles Sony's h.265 with ease.
 
Not right now, headed out for the day. I'll see if I can upload something this evening for you.
I'd be interested to hear what you find out.
 
While I can't give you specifics on the Studio, I do own a M1 mini and have been using it for over a year. I'm glad I spent extra for a larger hard drive (1tb) and the maximum ram (16gb), and high quality 4k 32" monitor.

If you're trying to decide between the Max and Ultra, I've heard despite twice the price for the Ultra there isn't a significant difference in video editing performance. I'd get the Max with 64ram/1tb and put the money you saved into a monitor and external ssd.
 
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I work for a small company that does work for a huge broadcaster. They can edit with anyone, luckily they give me a lot of work. That being said, I’m often editing with a producer. I need a snappy computer that works well under tight deadlines. With my current avid system, I often transcode everything to keep everything stable. I’d love to transcode faster or just link an edit. That’s really what I’m looking for — dependability, too. Exporting and rendering faster would also help.

so not much of a difference between max an ultra? That’s interesting. I wonder why?
 
drboffa said:
Do you have a Canon h.265 file to share? I'm curious to see if my M1 Max will play it, since it handles Sony's h.265 with ease.
Click to expand...

Yes, it will; my MBA plays them. All of the M1s can easily handle Canon's H.265, but the resolution does make a difference (naturally 8K is more taxing, especially once you start adding things to the image).
 
thefilmaddict said:
so not much of a difference between max an ultra? That’s interesting. I wonder why?
Click to expand...
Here's a YT review with that conclusion.
https://youtu.be/FLl-UuPfV_Y

The Ultra has two M1 chips so I don't know why but often there is a bottleneck some where either in software or hardware that limits the performance. From the charts I looked at it still is very fast. You could look at other reviews to see if they have a different result...
 
drboffa said:
Do you have a Canon h.265 file to share? I'm curious to see if my M1 Max will play it, since it handles Sony's h.265 with ease.
Click to expand...

Dave, I just sent you a link to download four original H.265 4K clips from the XF705. I'll be interested to hear how they play.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Dave, I just sent you a link to download four original H.265 4K clips from the XF705. I'll be interested to hear how they play.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

I just downloaded and tested things out.

In Resolve: totally smooth realtime playback, zero issues. I also added a creative look LUT to one of the clips and again, smooth playback. Just for fun I then tried playing back two clips (no LUTS) at once (scaled each to 50% and put them side by side in the program monitor) and playback was still totally smooth.

In Premiere: initially playback stuttered a bit when I first dropped in a clip to create a sequence. But after letting the program sit for a few seconds (literally, seconds) I got realtime playback at 1/2 resolution in the viewer window. I then bumped up to full resolution and again, realtime playback.

Let me know if you want me to further stress test these.

I don't know how Sony's implementation of h.265 compares under the hood, but for context I can get realtime playback of 120p h.265 from my a7s3 (in Resolve, in a 60p timeline).

EDIT: my system specs:

M1 Max MacBook Pro 14"
10 core
32 GB RAM
 
Thanks for doing the testing. Even though I don't usually have to deal with H.265 footage, this just nudged me one step closer to ordering a new Mac anyway.
 
This was just announced for M1 macs, a usb dock with RAID configurable dual NVME slots. Great for fast local temp storage.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/...|VIJ&__stm_medium=email&__stm_source=smartech


i just bought a Glyph dock a few months back, and if i could improve on it, it would be dual slot SSD for RAID of some sort.

One of the big deals seems to be the Thunderbolt speeds. Older TB2 and TB3 ports i guess slow down on the M1 TB4 computers, so to get top speeds, the dock apparently has to also be TB4 native.

A dock like this should help make for a zippy edit computer, with more ports and maybe a RAID 0 nvme setup. Plus it can unplug and go with your MBP, if you choose.
 
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