So, today, we [a small film/media studio I own] got in a 60C base M2 Ultra Mac Studio to see if it was any faster than an M1 Ultra Mac Studio at real-world 4K editing with effects and 3D titles in Final Cut Pro.
After having an M1 Ultra for many months, we found it was a wonderful machine. But it wasn't vastly faster than the M1 Max laptops we tried for video editing. Timeline performance for 8K files and effects was definitely smoother on the M1 Ultra, but the actual export times were always very similar.
As it turns out, Apple had some limitations with the M1 Ultra and M1 designs that starved the GPU cores, as well as not letting both media engines to run at the same time on one video file. This seems to have been somewhat mitigated with M2 Ultra. That shows up in 3D rendering cases and transcodes where the M2 Ultra is vastly faster than the M1 Ultra.
All the rest of the speed improvements roughly track with the increased core counts and higher clock speeds. You do get a lot more for your money with M2 Ultra, but M1 Ultra is still relatively fast for video editing.
We just want faster
We tested against many real world projects, all sourced from Sony HEVC 10 Bit 422 files, rendered to ProRes 422 in the timeline. We had many streams of 4K Multicam in some projects. We use many effects from MotionVFX, FilmConvert for color grading, and 3D titles from various sources. We tried the (horribly inefficient) Pixel Film Studios 3D title packs too as they are notoriously difficult to render. The projects we tested ran from 1 min commercials to 10 min training films to 20 min short films. All export at 4K in HEVC 10Bit high "Computer" settings out of the latest FCP.
We have not tried anything else yet.
TL;DR: With base 60C M2 Ultra vs the previous M1 Ultra base (48C) model:
1) Expect about 37-40% speed increases on 4K exports with various non-3d effects over the M1 Ultra 48C model.
2) The M1 Ultra 48C model is only a little faster than am M1 Max for FCP editing, and an M2 Max probably meets or exceeds it. It only scales well for CPU tasks.
2) Expect 140 - 200% speed increases on 4K exports with heavy 3D generated titles or effects over the M1 Ultra.
If you compare the old M1 64 core model to the 72 core model, the deltas will be similar as it's a similar core bump of 4 CPU and 12 GPU.
Details:
Before we get to the results, one thing I noticed that surprised me from last year is how little speed increase there is in 4k FCP editing and rendering from the M1 Max to the M1 Ultra. This was rarely shown in early reviews. I am not sure if the software just improved the Max's so much since that they caught up to the M1 and its inherent cache issues or what.
If you extrapolate, the M2 Max is probably faster than the M1 Ultra (48C base unit) for GPU intensive tasks, which is most of the load in FCP (and Davinci). It is bizarre. Only CPU intensive tasks scale well on M1 Ultra (which FCP barely uses); GPU is not great.
Keep in mind this is just based on the testing we did with the latest version of Final Cut Pro and FxPlug plugins. CPU intensive tasks are always faster on the ultra.
That changes with M2 Ultra. Mostly it tracks with the speed increases Apple advertised. Here are the speed increases we saw measured with stopwatches over 5 projects, then averaged. We split out the 3D heavy projects separately.
We wanted to test Neat Video NR but the plugin isn't ready for M2 Ultra yet.
All FxPlug 4 plugins seem to work just fine however.
"Keeper" the ANE AI driven keyer also seems to work a lot better and smoother. It was never slow before, but it is far more fluid now.
I also tested exports to compressor; they were the same speed as inside FCP. I will try batch conversions at a later time; they seem to be lightning fast.
Average M2 Ultra 60C Speed Increase over 48C M1 Ultra
37% - HEVC 10 Bit 4K Exports
31% - 4K Timeline renders (if one has background render turned off)
137% - (2.4x ?) Heavy 3D title rendering
Average M1 Ultra 48C Speed Increase over 32C M1 Max Laptop
10% - HEVC 10 Bit 4K Exports
11% - 4K Timeline renders (if one has background render turned off)
(The M1 Max scores were virtually the same for Heavy 3D rendering)
So we can see that Apple has fixed some of the flaws in "ultrafusion" from the M1 Ultra in M2, so there is much much better GPU scaling, especially in 3D graphics intensive tasks, and video transcoding.
Day to day it's not a stunning difference - it's not like the M1 Ultra got slower, especially in CPU performance. But that M1 Ultra's GPU and Media Engines were always stunted and scaled very poorly. M2 does a lot better.
If everyone can wait a year or two for M3 Ultra; it should be a LOT faster than even this. Think 3090-4090 Nvidia style jumps of 70% plus. But for 3D rendering M2 Ultra does that today over M1 Ultra and Max.
Hope this helps people! This is just one day off real world testing with existing projects in FCP with plugins; of course YMMV.
After having an M1 Ultra for many months, we found it was a wonderful machine. But it wasn't vastly faster than the M1 Max laptops we tried for video editing. Timeline performance for 8K files and effects was definitely smoother on the M1 Ultra, but the actual export times were always very similar.
As it turns out, Apple had some limitations with the M1 Ultra and M1 designs that starved the GPU cores, as well as not letting both media engines to run at the same time on one video file. This seems to have been somewhat mitigated with M2 Ultra. That shows up in 3D rendering cases and transcodes where the M2 Ultra is vastly faster than the M1 Ultra.
All the rest of the speed improvements roughly track with the increased core counts and higher clock speeds. You do get a lot more for your money with M2 Ultra, but M1 Ultra is still relatively fast for video editing.
We just want faster
We tested against many real world projects, all sourced from Sony HEVC 10 Bit 422 files, rendered to ProRes 422 in the timeline. We had many streams of 4K Multicam in some projects. We use many effects from MotionVFX, FilmConvert for color grading, and 3D titles from various sources. We tried the (horribly inefficient) Pixel Film Studios 3D title packs too as they are notoriously difficult to render. The projects we tested ran from 1 min commercials to 10 min training films to 20 min short films. All export at 4K in HEVC 10Bit high "Computer" settings out of the latest FCP.
We have not tried anything else yet.
TL;DR: With base 60C M2 Ultra vs the previous M1 Ultra base (48C) model:
1) Expect about 37-40% speed increases on 4K exports with various non-3d effects over the M1 Ultra 48C model.
2) The M1 Ultra 48C model is only a little faster than am M1 Max for FCP editing, and an M2 Max probably meets or exceeds it. It only scales well for CPU tasks.
2) Expect 140 - 200% speed increases on 4K exports with heavy 3D generated titles or effects over the M1 Ultra.
If you compare the old M1 64 core model to the 72 core model, the deltas will be similar as it's a similar core bump of 4 CPU and 12 GPU.
Details:
Before we get to the results, one thing I noticed that surprised me from last year is how little speed increase there is in 4k FCP editing and rendering from the M1 Max to the M1 Ultra. This was rarely shown in early reviews. I am not sure if the software just improved the Max's so much since that they caught up to the M1 and its inherent cache issues or what.
If you extrapolate, the M2 Max is probably faster than the M1 Ultra (48C base unit) for GPU intensive tasks, which is most of the load in FCP (and Davinci). It is bizarre. Only CPU intensive tasks scale well on M1 Ultra (which FCP barely uses); GPU is not great.
Keep in mind this is just based on the testing we did with the latest version of Final Cut Pro and FxPlug plugins. CPU intensive tasks are always faster on the ultra.
That changes with M2 Ultra. Mostly it tracks with the speed increases Apple advertised. Here are the speed increases we saw measured with stopwatches over 5 projects, then averaged. We split out the 3D heavy projects separately.
We wanted to test Neat Video NR but the plugin isn't ready for M2 Ultra yet.
All FxPlug 4 plugins seem to work just fine however.
"Keeper" the ANE AI driven keyer also seems to work a lot better and smoother. It was never slow before, but it is far more fluid now.
I also tested exports to compressor; they were the same speed as inside FCP. I will try batch conversions at a later time; they seem to be lightning fast.
Average M2 Ultra 60C Speed Increase over 48C M1 Ultra
37% - HEVC 10 Bit 4K Exports
31% - 4K Timeline renders (if one has background render turned off)
137% - (2.4x ?) Heavy 3D title rendering
Average M1 Ultra 48C Speed Increase over 32C M1 Max Laptop
10% - HEVC 10 Bit 4K Exports
11% - 4K Timeline renders (if one has background render turned off)
(The M1 Max scores were virtually the same for Heavy 3D rendering)
So we can see that Apple has fixed some of the flaws in "ultrafusion" from the M1 Ultra in M2, so there is much much better GPU scaling, especially in 3D graphics intensive tasks, and video transcoding.
Day to day it's not a stunning difference - it's not like the M1 Ultra got slower, especially in CPU performance. But that M1 Ultra's GPU and Media Engines were always stunted and scaled very poorly. M2 does a lot better.
If everyone can wait a year or two for M3 Ultra; it should be a LOT faster than even this. Think 3090-4090 Nvidia style jumps of 70% plus. But for 3D rendering M2 Ultra does that today over M1 Ultra and Max.
Hope this helps people! This is just one day off real world testing with existing projects in FCP with plugins; of course YMMV.
