Is M2 Macbook air capable of Canon R5 8K editing?

[stanleystf]

Is M2 Macbook air capable of Canon R5 8K editing?

*If so, is there a difference between the 256ssd and 512sdd versions?

I intend to buy a base Macbook air M2 and a Canon R5 to make short films and commercials. Is it a good idea?

Should I spend extra on SSD or would that not affect performance in video editing? I mean for a situation when the system runs out of RAM and uses swap memory.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

I don’t want to be rude but there’s plenty of stuff on YouTube and these forums that have the answers to your questions multiple times over.

 

[Nbd1790]

Short answer. No. You'll likely get throttled if you're editing a short film.

4k? Should be fine. Yes there's a substantial speed difference with read and write between 256 and 512.

If you're editing short films in that resolution, you'll be much better off with an M1 Pro or M1 Max.

Just a piece of advice, 8k is sort of a waste at this point in time. You would be catering to a very small percentage of people who can even playback at that resolution (in any sort of media film / commercial etc). When I say a small percentage, it certainly leans toward single digit percentages.

 

[BanditoB]

I have a Canon R5 C and have been editing 4k videos on the M2 MBA without issue. I have also seen one of Maxtech's videos where he did some 8k editing on the M2 MBA as well with good results. That being said, Nbd1790 is right. If you're going to do this on a regular and ongoing basis, you'll be much better served with a Pro or Max SOC.

Also, if you're planning to edit 8k video you'll need much more than 512 GBs of storage. I would recommend a minimum of 2 TB and would urge you to buy as much storage as you can afford. 8k video uses a ton of storage.

 

[stanleystf]

I have a Canon R5 C and have been editing 4k videos on the M2 MBA without issue. I have also seen one of Maxtech's videos where he did some 8k editing on the M2 MBA as well with good results. That being said, Nbd1790 is right. If you're going to do this on a regular and ongoing basis, you'll be much better served with a Pro or Max SOC.

Also, if you're planning to edit 8k video you'll need much more than 512 GBs of storage. I would recommend a minimum of 2 TB and would urge you to buy as much storage as you can afford. 8k video uses a ton of storage.

Which one do you think can handle Canon R5 8K Raw footage better?

1. Macbook Air M2 with 16Gb of Ram

2. Macbook Pro M1 16 inch base model (16 core GPU, 16Gb Ram)

 

[KPOM]

Which one do you think can handle Canon R5 8K Raw footage better?

1. Macbook Air M2 with 16Gb of Ram

2. Macbook Pro M1 16 inch base model (16 core GPU, 16Gb Ram)

The latter because of the fan and additional GPU cores.

 

[BanditoB]

Yes, clearly the 16" MacBook Pro M1 Pro would be a better choice for your intended use. I will, however, warn you again that 512 GB of storage is probably going to leave you wishing for more if your video compilations are more than just a few minutes in length.

Keep in mind, that if you're shooting in 8K Raw, 13 minutes of footage equals 256GB of storage. With a 512GB SSD on your MacBook with some apps and your data installed, that will will eat up about half of the storage, leaving you with ~256GB to edit your videos on. That means you'd be limited to editing about 6 minutes worth of footage if you're also going to write it out to the internal SSD. That's not much footage to work with. If you don't use 8K Raw and instead use a compressed format with the highest compression, you could work with up to about 30 minutes of footage. Still not very much if you have very many scenes. 8K video footage eats storage space for lunch, so you either need to get more internal storage on your MacBook or depend on external storage for video editing.

 

[chrono1081]

Is M2 Macbook air capable of Canon R5 8K editing?

*If so, is there a difference between the 256ssd and 512sdd versions?

I intend to buy a base Macbook air M2 and a Canon R5 to make short films and commercials. Is it a good idea?

Should I spend extra on SSD or would that not affect performance in video editing? I mean for a situation when the system runs out of RAM and uses swap memory.

iJustine was editing 8k red footage on hers in one of her videos just fine.

 

[Toratek]

I find when working with 4k video in iMovie, if I have more than about 60 transitions and effects, 30 dynamic title cards, and four audio tracks, the system (M2 10-16-1TB) does slow down a bit when scrubbing through the timeline.

In other words, it blows my 13" Intel MBP away, but has its limitations. Of course.

Obviously the correct tool for a regular diet of that sort of work is the M1 MBP 14 or 16- but for very occasional work like I had to do yesterday, it's more than capable.