Video Editing Performance on M4 Max

[Grilled Cheese]

Thinking about upgrading my M1 Max to an M4 Max for music and video production. It SHINES at these tasks, but if I can cut down export times then I’m happy to invest in a newer machine.

While the M4 Max performs better than the M1 Max in most synthetic benchmarks, it doesn’t seem much faster at video export times in programs like Final Cut Pro (based on a variety of reviews I’ve seen on YouTube).

Why is that? This is not really my area of expertise, and I’d like to understand what components of a Mac make the most difference to real time video editing performance and export times.

For example, is it the GPU or CPU that helps render effects like blur and titles in real time?

Are Final Cut export times not showing much improvement between generations because they all have similar media engines?

What video related tasks would the M4 Max show the most improvement over the M1 Max?

Thanks for any insights and education you can help with!

Cheers!
~Cheesy

 

[smithdr]

Hi GC:

I just put into use a new M4Max 16MBP with 64GB RAM and 4 TB SSD. I also own a M1Max 16MBP with 64GB RAM and 4 TB SSD. I use Davinci Resolve Studio. My impression is that the M4Max is about 10% faster encoding (or as you call exporting) vs. the M1Max. While I don’t have a hard number for this, the M4Max appears to be significantly quicker at rendering with several effects applied, e.g. noise reduction, color correction, face correction, and film look correction.

Don

 

[Grilled Cheese]

Hi GC:

I just put into use a new M4Max 16MBP with 64GB RAM and 4 TB SSD. I also own a M1Max 16MBP with 64GB RAM and 4 TB SSD. I use Davinci Resolve Studio. My impression is that the M4Max is about 10% faster encoding (or as you call exporting) vs. the M1Max. While I don’t have a hard number for this, the M4Max appears to be significantly quicker at rendering with several effects applied, e.g. noise reduction, color correction, face correction, and film look correction.

Don

Aaah...I think you just explained one thing that had been confusing me.

In most of the review videos I've watched, Final Cut (and Resolve) export tests featured projects with very few effects applied. In those cases, the media encoders are the limiting factor (not the CPU or GPU). If I understand correctly, neither the M1 Max or M4 Max is stressing their CPU or GPU and so their similar media engines result in similar export times.

But if you add a lot of effects then the performance of the GPU/CPU becomes the limiting factor. I've seen a couple of tests where the M4 Max slayed the M1 Max in export times, and those were the tests in which lots of effects were being used. M4 Max = more rendering performance overhead.

This is very different to, for example, offline exporting of a Logic Pro music production, where more CPU performance = faster exporting.

Seems really obvious now, but for some reason this was befuddling me.

 

[smithdr]

Hi GC:

Encoding and rendering almost seem to be two different processes--I don't understand why. Encoding, the process of making taking your timeline and transforming it into something that you can upload to YouTube, Facebook, etc. is only an about 10% faster with the M4Max. Not much improvement on a 2 minute timeline.

Rendering, the process that allows you to play through a timeline is much faster with the M4Max using these fairly intensive nodes such as face correction and film look. When rendering would taking a long time with the M1Max, I would play back using 1/2 resolution of a UHD clip as a work around. I don't have to do this with the M4Max. To me, quick timeline rendering is more important than encoding because I get to see the what the final product looks like before I take the time to encode.

Again, I am using Davinci Resolve Studio and not FCP11. Maybe FCP11 has different performance characteristics.

Don