Weird "benchmark" result in Keynote.

[/V\acpower]

I just got my new M1 MBA today (7GPU, 16GB RAM)

I also own a 2016 13' MBP (Base model, 2 thunderbolt ports)

Anyway, I was curious of comparing the speed of my two machines, and since I'm a teacher using Keynote to record presentations and export them as 1080p videos, I thought I could take one of my keynote file on both machine and start a video export at the same time and check how much quicker my new MBA is.

...

Here are the results :

- 2016 13' MBP : 19 minutes.
- 2020 M1 MBA : ... 24 minutes.

?

I'm pretty confident I had nothing running in the background of my MBA.

In fact, the curious thing is that while exporting, I used activity monitor to check the activities of CPU and GPU cores on both machine. Basically it doesn't run at all close to "maximum speed" on both machine. On the M1 MBA it was using like 20-20% of 6 CPU cores and marginally used the GPU. The MBP varied between 40% and 50% of all "4" CPU cores (technically 2 cores + hyper threading).

(after that, just to make sure there was nothing wrong with my MBA, did a similar comparison with the MBP using 5 4K overwatch highlight converted to 1080p in Handbrake, using the Apple Silicon version of the App on the MBA. MBA : 189s, MBP : 680s.)

Anyway, I guess it's just that Keynote video export just doesn't seem to care about doing the task as fast as possible. However I'm curious, why is it so ? Anyone have some knowledge on this ? Any idea ?

 

[jeanlain]

Video encoding is done on specialised hardware, not the CPU/GPU cores, on both machines. The MBP uses intel Quick Sync Video and the M1 uses some Apple hardware encoder. But the latter is supposed to be faster. I don't know why that's not the case in keynote.

 

[/V\acpower]

Video encoding is done on specialised hardware, not the CPU/GPU cores, on both machines. The MBP uses intel Quick Sync Video and the M1 uses some Apple hardware encoder. But the latter is supposed to be faster. I don't know why that's not the case in keynote.

Well, in Handbrake the CPU is clearly "maxed out" on both machine when doing a video encode. I'd have to try iMovie, but I would expect my M1 to destroy the old base 13 MBP.

 

[jeanlain]

The CPU is maxed out in handbrake is you select a software encoder (e.g.,, x264). If you select "viteotoolbox" (hardware encoder), it should not.

 

[zedsdead]

Does this mean the iMac will only be available in the smaller size and to replace my 27" iMac, I'll have to get an iMac Pro at twice the price? Please hurry and call me an idiot for getting this wrong, I'm too poor to be right.

The CPU is maxed out in handbrake is you select a software encoder (e.g.,, x264). If you select "viteotoolbox" (hardware encoder), it should not.

And the "videotoolbox" encoders are VERY fast. Try it out.

 

[jdb8167]

Sounds like video export isn’t optimized in Keynote yet. Remember how new the M1 Macs are. It isn’t too surprising that Apple hasn’t fully optimized everything yet. I’d report it to Apple and assume it’ll get fixed in a future update.