So I took a further deeper look at these devices after getting excited about the performance of the laptop. I bought the 8 core "2nd tier" model last week, and then after hemming and hawing over 16Gb of RAM, went for the max Apple retail config go 2.4 8 core/32GB/2TB/5500 w/8GB.
I wanted to test both models to see if the 32GB/8GB VRAM made a big difference in FCPX video editing with 4K (TL;DR - no, it doesn't, but it helps a little.)
I also was very struck by the performance of these laptops in editing 4k, so I wanted a gut check to see if they were as fast as an iMac Pro we have (TL;DR - no, they aren't.)
We mostly edit 15-45 min documentaries and training films in 4K, exporting to 4K. We take in footage primarily from 4K cameras that output compressed AVC 4K.
Keep in mind that I always did my primary editing on the iMac Pro (since it was released). Prior to that I used a 2016 15” Quad Core MacBook Pro with an eGPU attached (Vega 56), or a 13” Quad Core 2018 MacBook Pro with a Radeon 460 eGPU.
The 16” MacBooks - with no eGPU, are faster than both of those. They can edit 4K footage easily. And in FCPX you can even work with the timeline in real time smoothly, even with effects applied.
However, the iMac Pro with a Vega 64 still blows them away; it is anywhere from 200% faster (with a master file/rendering to ProRes), to 33% faster (HEVC), to a little faster (Bruce X, which I think has outlived its usefulness.)
The iMac Pro can also handle 8K files ok, 6K files, and playback multiple streams of 4K in real time with effects. I don’t think the MacBook Pros can do that (with effects, without, sure.)
Considering that the iMac Pro config was $6749 and the MacBook Pro 3899, but a laptop vs a large all in one desktop, these numbers are reasonable.
The key for me is they can edit 4K in real time and export in maybe 30% slower than real time to compressed 4K deliverables. The previous configs I had couldn’t really do that. They were slower, and you had to wait in some cases for clips to render.
The iMac Pro, now almost 2 years on, still screams for this purpose.
And all of them will improve with more powerful eGPUs.
One note - the Wifi is 2-3x faster on the iMac Pro against an 8x8 MIMO A router. The wifi tops out on the iMac at 1 Gigabit (amazing really) sustained; the MacBooks can only get 2–400 Mbit at the same spot. The iMac Pro has VERY good wifi.
Note 2 - in all of these machines, the CPU was barely used for this export.
Note 3 - VRAM use was maxed at 4Gb in the 4GB 5500 model, 8GB in the 8GB 5500 model, and about 12GB of the 16 free in the Vega 64.
Configs tested:
iMP iMac Pro - 64Gb RAM, 10 Core 3 GHz Xeon-W, Vega 64 GPU with 16GB HBM & 1 TB storage- $6749 before tax
MP1 MacBook Pro 16” - 16GB RAM, 2.3 8 core 2.4 GHz Core i9, Radeon 5500m GPU with 4GB - $2799 before tax
MP2 MacBook Pro 16” - 32GB RAM, 2.4 8 core 2.4 GHz Core i9, Radeon 5500m GPU with 8GB - $3899 before tax
Source: 3 Minute, 30 second 4K60 piece in FCPX taken on DJI OSMO Pocket - 4K/60 compressed
All clips retimed to 24p, with FilmConvert plugin applied adding grain and color, and a gaussian blur, and FCPX stabilization.
All machines could play back in real time without rendering at “best quality” native 4K res, but only the iMac Pro played back perfectly at 24 fps. The MacBooks looked closer to 20 fps. Totally usable however - close ; and perfect in “best performance”.
If one effect was disabled in the stack (leaving color correction, grain, and stabilization, say), the MacBook Pros all played full res/full speed.
No background rendering on, all rendered content cleared:
Export to ProRes 422 Master File (4K/24):
MP1: (min:seconds) 4:53
MP2: 4:40
iMP: 2:49
Export to HEVC 8-Bit for Apple Devices 4K:
MP1: 4:38
MP2: 4:34
iMP: 3:04
Bruce X 5K timeline:
MP1: 17 seconds
MP2: 11 seconds
iMP: 10 seconds
So... it's all about relative performance. For NOTEBOOKS these are quite good for real 4K editing with effects, and rapid timeline performance (in FCPX anyway; premiere is slower but improving).
For hardcore speed - the iMac Pro and upcoming Mac Pro will still win.
It's all relative though.... the 16" mid and high end MacBook Pro configs are about as fast as the old 8 core trashcan Mac Pros with D500 (dual) GPUs from 2013, which are still workhorses, especially for HD content.
I am impressed... keeping the higher end config (mostly for some runway / 16GB is a little low), but the iMac Pro is where the long renders and re-renders for edits by clients will happen to minimize time spent.
[UPDATE] - further use continues to bear this out. However, they -feel- closer than you'd think. FCPX does some kind of caching (?) even with render files deleted that makes subsequent runs faster. The main timeline editing performance is quite close between both the MP2 and iMP. And that iMP is a significantly beefier machine (+2 faster CPU cores, 2X RAM, 2X VRAM, 33-60% faster GPU).
Also, I can run 5 streams of compressed 4K WITH effect stacks applied in best performance without rendering on the MacBook Pro, (amazing) but the timeline performance when moving those stacked clips around is rather slow. But you can do it, and after background rendering of course this speeds right up.
I wouldn't necessarily replace the iMP with the Macbook Pro... but you could without too much loss in usable speed for timeline playback and render speed. They are relatively close. The average speed increase on render out has been about 25-30% for me. And the machines can both fluidly edit 4K in best performance; the iMP just has more headroom for more 4K clips with effects for real time unrendered playback of "best quality".
And the iMP -still- stutters when you lay on 3D titles over effects over a 4K clip... as much as the Macbook Pro does. It is no panacea.
I wanted to test both models to see if the 32GB/8GB VRAM made a big difference in FCPX video editing with 4K (TL;DR - no, it doesn't, but it helps a little.)
I also was very struck by the performance of these laptops in editing 4k, so I wanted a gut check to see if they were as fast as an iMac Pro we have (TL;DR - no, they aren't.)
We mostly edit 15-45 min documentaries and training films in 4K, exporting to 4K. We take in footage primarily from 4K cameras that output compressed AVC 4K.
Keep in mind that I always did my primary editing on the iMac Pro (since it was released). Prior to that I used a 2016 15” Quad Core MacBook Pro with an eGPU attached (Vega 56), or a 13” Quad Core 2018 MacBook Pro with a Radeon 460 eGPU.
The 16” MacBooks - with no eGPU, are faster than both of those. They can edit 4K footage easily. And in FCPX you can even work with the timeline in real time smoothly, even with effects applied.
However, the iMac Pro with a Vega 64 still blows them away; it is anywhere from 200% faster (with a master file/rendering to ProRes), to 33% faster (HEVC), to a little faster (Bruce X, which I think has outlived its usefulness.)
The iMac Pro can also handle 8K files ok, 6K files, and playback multiple streams of 4K in real time with effects. I don’t think the MacBook Pros can do that (with effects, without, sure.)
Considering that the iMac Pro config was $6749 and the MacBook Pro 3899, but a laptop vs a large all in one desktop, these numbers are reasonable.
The key for me is they can edit 4K in real time and export in maybe 30% slower than real time to compressed 4K deliverables. The previous configs I had couldn’t really do that. They were slower, and you had to wait in some cases for clips to render.
The iMac Pro, now almost 2 years on, still screams for this purpose.
And all of them will improve with more powerful eGPUs.
One note - the Wifi is 2-3x faster on the iMac Pro against an 8x8 MIMO A router. The wifi tops out on the iMac at 1 Gigabit (amazing really) sustained; the MacBooks can only get 2–400 Mbit at the same spot. The iMac Pro has VERY good wifi.
Note 2 - in all of these machines, the CPU was barely used for this export.
Note 3 - VRAM use was maxed at 4Gb in the 4GB 5500 model, 8GB in the 8GB 5500 model, and about 12GB of the 16 free in the Vega 64.
Configs tested:
iMP iMac Pro - 64Gb RAM, 10 Core 3 GHz Xeon-W, Vega 64 GPU with 16GB HBM & 1 TB storage- $6749 before tax
MP1 MacBook Pro 16” - 16GB RAM, 2.3 8 core 2.4 GHz Core i9, Radeon 5500m GPU with 4GB - $2799 before tax
MP2 MacBook Pro 16” - 32GB RAM, 2.4 8 core 2.4 GHz Core i9, Radeon 5500m GPU with 8GB - $3899 before tax
Source: 3 Minute, 30 second 4K60 piece in FCPX taken on DJI OSMO Pocket - 4K/60 compressed
All clips retimed to 24p, with FilmConvert plugin applied adding grain and color, and a gaussian blur, and FCPX stabilization.
All machines could play back in real time without rendering at “best quality” native 4K res, but only the iMac Pro played back perfectly at 24 fps. The MacBooks looked closer to 20 fps. Totally usable however - close ; and perfect in “best performance”.
If one effect was disabled in the stack (leaving color correction, grain, and stabilization, say), the MacBook Pros all played full res/full speed.
No background rendering on, all rendered content cleared:
Export to ProRes 422 Master File (4K/24):
MP1: (min:seconds) 4:53
MP2: 4:40
iMP: 2:49
Export to HEVC 8-Bit for Apple Devices 4K:
MP1: 4:38
MP2: 4:34
iMP: 3:04
Bruce X 5K timeline:
MP1: 17 seconds
MP2: 11 seconds
iMP: 10 seconds
So... it's all about relative performance. For NOTEBOOKS these are quite good for real 4K editing with effects, and rapid timeline performance (in FCPX anyway; premiere is slower but improving).
For hardcore speed - the iMac Pro and upcoming Mac Pro will still win.
It's all relative though.... the 16" mid and high end MacBook Pro configs are about as fast as the old 8 core trashcan Mac Pros with D500 (dual) GPUs from 2013, which are still workhorses, especially for HD content.
I am impressed... keeping the higher end config (mostly for some runway / 16GB is a little low), but the iMac Pro is where the long renders and re-renders for edits by clients will happen to minimize time spent.
[UPDATE] - further use continues to bear this out. However, they -feel- closer than you'd think. FCPX does some kind of caching (?) even with render files deleted that makes subsequent runs faster. The main timeline editing performance is quite close between both the MP2 and iMP. And that iMP is a significantly beefier machine (+2 faster CPU cores, 2X RAM, 2X VRAM, 33-60% faster GPU).
Also, I can run 5 streams of compressed 4K WITH effect stacks applied in best performance without rendering on the MacBook Pro, (amazing) but the timeline performance when moving those stacked clips around is rather slow. But you can do it, and after background rendering of course this speeds right up.
I wouldn't necessarily replace the iMP with the Macbook Pro... but you could without too much loss in usable speed for timeline playback and render speed. They are relatively close. The average speed increase on render out has been about 25-30% for me. And the machines can both fluidly edit 4K in best performance; the iMP just has more headroom for more 4K clips with effects for real time unrendered playback of "best quality".
And the iMP -still- stutters when you lay on 3D titles over effects over a 4K clip... as much as the Macbook Pro does. It is no panacea.
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