Can the M3 Max MacBook Smoothly Edit EVERY Codec in DaVinci Resolve? 

What specs was your M3 Max using? (CPU cores and GPU cores)

@ratneshchandna it was the 16/40 with 48gb ram. It ripped!

Great comment, thank you! Yes, I'm starting to understand how the different codecs work and why or why I might not want to use them. Ultimately I'm trying to find that sweet spot between quality and being able to seamlessly edit my videos. I may have accidentally done it in the past but now I understand why and that is important. That's wild that you can change ISO etc in post with Red footage. Dam that's cool. Do you have a suggestion for which codec I should be using based on what you've seen? Or for anyone doing what I do with RU-vid? On my other channel you will see I do like using more effects and magic masks and I'd like to continue to do that. I'm still thinking about sending back this laptop then buying a used M1 Max maybe. I'm not sure yet. Good call about FCP vs Resolve... depending on which computer I end up keeping will decide which direction I go with this. Thanks again for taking the time to help me understand this. I really appreciate it 👊

@@thesahdstudio In terms of codec, shoot what works for you (or more likely, what your camera is capable of) both in gathering and in edit and finish. I believe you said you were using some flavor of S-Log and I would continue doing that. The less that is baked the better. IF you wanted to step it up you could get an outboard recorder and try ProRes raw. I have not used it but people I know and trust are finding good things. I should say, that for me, all of this starts with the lens. When I think about what I want a commercial or music video to look like, I start with the lens. Is it going to be anamorphic, wide screen spherical, and what is the finished aspect ratio? I use super sharp and accurate Zeiss cinema lenses with soft filters for some stuff and old wonky vintage lenses like super speeds T1.3 for something that I want to look creamy. An Arri rep once told me, cameras don't make pictures, lenses do. Cameras just record them. Nothing beats 16 bit raw in my opinion but I would imagine very few RU-vidrs are doing that, with the exception of somebody like MKBHD..www.youtube.com/@mkbhd.who shoots everything in .r3d. ProRes in its baked form is very good and lots and lots of movies shot on Alexa were shot in ProRes (12 bit I think....) and look fantastic. But that's because on a big set they make sure to get everything right in camera...so there is not as much fiddling in post, unless there are heavy VFX scenes and most of the time they will shoot those plates or scenes in raw so there is a lot of what I call "juice" to push things around in post. It is all a big dance I suppose. One more thing...I see a lot of people shooting 60 fames in a 60 frame timeline thinking it is a higher quality than 24. It is not, it looks video game-ish but there is very little motion blur. The world settled on 24 frames with a 180 degree shutter angle a long time ago because it looks so beautiful. Crisp is not better, at least not to my eye. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OaZnxAfcvY4.html&t

Thanks for all the info. Will chew on it!@@scotyount6226

@@thesahdstudio If you don't mind I will add one more thing regarding the RED footy. IF you want a real world measure of what the computer can do, you can take the clip of the kangaroo and the young woman in the convertible back to a less processed state. in Davinci Resolve, go to the color page and select your .r3d clip. Then click the camera raw tab at the far left of the page. Make sure you choose project for decode quality, and decode using clip. Make sure it says the color science is IPP2, and under color space, choose REDWideGamutRGB. Then choose the gamma curve which should be Log3G10. You will then see what 16 bit log looks like. If you do your test again it should result in faster results...(should.....). Good Luck and keep it up.

Nice! That's awesome, thanks for that. If I get time I'll tinker around. @@scotyount6226

Thanks! Take appreciate you saying 👊 been working hard to make it a cool/inspiring place to be!

Hey thanks for the comment! Appreciate the support. Yeah I hear you. It's a good idea. It's tough trying to remember all the little details sometimes when making videos but I will do my best in the future 👊

@@thesahdstudio keep it up! Looking forward to seeing more.

Glad you found the video 👊 and thanks for the positive comment!

Thanks! I still haven't discovered exactly what I'm going to do yet but I do think I'm getting closer to knowing what I actually need. It's so easy to just throw money at things and buy stuff hoping it works... I'm really trying to understand why. It's funny because now that I have the MacBook Pro and have used that for a while. Whenever I use my Windows machine and just hear the fan kick on it's SO noisy!!

It was a great experience overall using the M3 Max. I'm not sure if you saw the following videos but I ended up returning it and getting the M1 Max which I'm still happily using now. It's not perfect and suffers worse from the things mentioned in this video, but for the 95% of what I do it's sufficient. Much better value anyway. Knowing exactly what you need out of a computer is the hard part! I'm excited to see what the competition does in the next year or two.

That's an interesting line! I haven't considered getting the Studio at all... can you find decent deals on them? I imagine they aren't cheap. Like right now, responding to comments, I'm just sitting on the couch, reclined, and I love it! But I don't need a M3 Max to do this... although I love video editing like this. Maybe as you've also discovered, I could probably do my basic edits etc on a M1 instead and save thousands of dollars... What display would you get for a desktop? I could go either way still to be honest... maybe build a desktop then get a Air for the lighter work?

I can't say for sure... but the battery life is incredible and it will likely last you all day! Though I'm not exactly sure how taxing Photoshop is compared to video editing. You going to go for it!?

Yeah the Smart Render feature is awesome... good call. And how do you convert the footage? Luckily I find the Max is good enough at editing h.264 I don't feel the need to convert my footage.

I was using Stats for Mac to get that info: www.macupdate.com/app/mac/62638/stats What Editor are you using now? And yeah, it sounds like you are in the same boat as me... hehe. There's not question this M3 Max is outstanding for regular editing, but, yeah I'll say it, disappointing when it comes to adding effects when video editing. Why don't people talk about this stuff?? The pros? This would be the FIRST thing I talk about when reviewing these things. Here's how fast it drops animated text.. here's how fast it magic masks... I mean c'mon! Well, that's what I'm trying to do anyway. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet either. I'm leaning towards getting a used M1 Max on marketplace with 32g of ram. Maybe that or heck, just get an Air and build a desktop? Ugh, I don't know. I have a feeling a lot of people will upgrade over X-mas then sell their crap. So that's when I'll probably shop the used market. Yeah I bought through Apple and they have an extended return period due to the holidays. You didn't get that? I bought mine on Nov 27th and they gave me until Jan 8th, Maybe it's different for refurbed?

@@thesahdstudio oh ok. I didn’t even look. It’s probably the same. I was just assuming based on the normal return period. Thanks. I will try that stat thing and try some tests. I’m using DaVinci resolve studio. I did take some 4K 30 footage from my action cam. Not sure the codec and put the digital distortion effect on it. Playback dropped to 8.9 fps. Yikes.

Glad you find the video! Thanks for the comment👊

I have always used Resolve but you're right... and I'm starting to consider trying out FCP. I'm not going to make that decision though until I find the right computer for me... because I'm still on the fence! I think I'll wait until after Christmas when all the people who can actually afford them get the new ones then try and sell their old ones. What are you leaning towards at the moment?

I haven’t used resolve I have always been Final Cut but I only edit in ProRes the difference is unbelievable vs other codecs

@@thesahdstudio keep flip flopping between a refurbed m2 max specc'd up, m3 pro 18gb 1tb, and then m3 max 48gb 1tb lol.

I'd be curious about the M2 Max... How much cheaper is it? For what it's worth I'm going to return my M3 Max and buy a M1 Max used. It has 32 gigs of RAM and Apple Care until the end of next year. It's half the cost. This way I can spend a bunch of money on other things too. I think for my case because of what I know now and what file codec to edit, I realized that things like animated texts or effects are still a bottle neck for any Apple laptop, and the rest of the performance the M3 offers won't really affect me that much. Plus this way of something awesome comes on next year I can sell this computer without losing much money.

@thesahdstudio sounds like a good plan! I've had the 16" m2 max 36gb 1tb for $2900 in my cart for like a week now lol. Good luck with the m1, I'll be following along to see how it works out for ya.

Hmmm I can't think of anything off the top of my head... I would suggest submitting a ticket with Resolve. I'm on vacation but when I get back and play around I figure out anything I'll let you know.

Yes, that button you saw LOOKED like I had proxies on because Under Playback I had Use Optimized Media When Available checked. I didn't have any optimized media but in that mode it definitely would have used them had I created them. Good catch

Well in the video I realized that the M3 Max isn't the right tool for the job I'm looking to do. It's great for basic video editing.... Heck, it's overkill. But it's not great for adding VFX or any other graphic intensive effects to the footage. This is partly my fault not knowing how things work... Every video I watched told me it was awesome. Nobody mentioned that it's not great for adding effects to your videos. And I want my videos to be more engaging.... I love using magic masks and doing creative things and that stuff doesn't go especially fast with this computer.

@@thesahdstudioyeah that's a deal breaker for vfx if it's too slow

I've learned quite a bit since making this comment... And I think using work around like smart rendering make the workflow decent. But yeah I returned the ?3 Max and got a m1 Max instead. Much better value for similar performance.

Yeah I was probably shooting in h.264 or h.265. I can't quite remember! Those both edit very similar on them silicon chip computers.

Hi, I had the 16/40 48gb/1tb unbinned one! I'll add the info to the video, thanks.

It's really bad for your 4k files eh? Have you considered using proxies at all? Which editing software do you use? I know Resolve makes it SUPER easy to create proxies on the fly. I even made a video about it. That might help you make your editing better for now until you find the right next computer. I ended up getting a used M1 Max and so far it's been solid. Not amazing with VFX but at least now I know how to use smart rendering to make that process much smoother.

I also use resolve and i know about smart render which i think that red line that comes on the timeline is what you are talking about which turnes blue after it is rendered i use that but when i have hours of footage it really takes time and consumes lot of space and also my whole MacBook starts lagging. I did try to create proxy files once but that took so much to time for 1 clip i think 15mins and i had more 700 to go. I'm thinking to build a pc with 4060 or 4080 what do you think about that any suggestions? thanks @@thesahdstudio

What did you buy?! Did you build a desktop? That sounds exciting. People love comparisons especially Windows vs Apple. Yeah I've been rocking the Studio version of Resolve for a while now. It's great. No regrets buying that software. I'm considering building a rig myself... what video card/mobo/cpu did you get?

That's really interesting. What editing software do you use and how do you convert it to ProRes?

@@thesahdstudio I use apple compressor. It works really well I also use it to export the final project to other formats.

@@thesahdstudio I edit in FCP but I use Apple compressor to convert to prores

That's great you're able to get the job done with the Air. I mean it's not the ideal tool for the job but like you said, if you know what you're doing you can make it work.

I only recently learned with rendering on the spot so I'll have to play around with that... interesting! I'm only recently learning all about chips and foundries etc... who is DVR? Would you consider going AMD with your next setup? Good call about the external SSD... and yeah, I haven't seen ONE person mention what I'm talking about with the VFX etc... it's all been ''the Max is insane!!!'', and hey, it is for a lot of things but not everything.

Yeah that's a good idea... it's tough when you just want to get in there and start editing, but once you learn how to efficiently makes proxies and get used to working on those files, it really does make things faster.

Indeed, I put them on a dedicated external SSD and they speed up the offline massively for me. I have an Intel Mac so don’t know how long it takes to make proxies in the newest ones but I usually am done by the time I have made a cup of tea and crashes/ slowdowns are super rare even for heavier files.

Hey man, the rules are the rules! lol 👊

I've been learning a lot since getting this m3 Max not just about it's capabilities but what other computers are capable of and am starting to see that perhaps my demands and expectations for certain things (like effects) need to be adjusted. I think maybe I could get away with a lesser machine and not worry as much about being able to do XYZ for those times that I want to. I'm not a Pro yet though I feel like things are going well (on my other main channel) so I want to really want to streamline my setup... at least that's what I told myself and why I bought the Max.

Awesome! Thanks for that, it really helps. I'm still surprised that choosing a smooth video editing experience isn't the number one priority for most people. It is for me and it's not even close. Do you know or are able to explain anything more about the effects or GPU usage? Like a video card would be able to play the footage with the effects on top easier probably right?

​@@thesahdstudio As a very high level summary, your M3 Max SOC has a decoder chip that turns various compressed video into a raw binary matrix array in memory (why you're not seeing GPU % changes between codecs - quite an achievement, most systems bog down with h265). The effects then modify this matrix 1 frame at a time to add the overlay on top. Now once you have the raw binary matrix of each individual pixel of each computed frame in memory, the higher the resolution and output frame-rate, the slower applying effects will be - they are applied to each relevant pixel up to 40 pixels at a time (as you have 40 GPU cores, but it is difficult to parallelise loads like this, so many effects can't use all cores). The codec makes absolutely zero difference to this. Many of these effects were never optimised for such resolutions and there's not much you can do. Some effects seem like they are doing a lot and play smoothly, while others are probably older effects that need to be optimised by the developers and bog down even on the most powerful systems - do try Final Cut though as many effects seem to be very well optimised (except third party ones like Dehancer Pro which is dog slow). As for the codec choices, it depends really, with HS you can fit something like 10-15x more footage on your SSD at *higher* quality vs SI - so if you care about quality, it's the obvious choice. Effects and playback is still the same, but scrubbing has to be slower because it only stores 1 key frame every second, any other frame in between has to be computed from this key frame causing this less realtime scrubbing. I find my editing quality of life to largely be impacted by effects/filters performance, rather than scrubbing and unfortunately, the codec makes no difference to that. If scrubbing performance is the goal, the M3 Max has 2 media engines so creating ProRes proxies is very quick. However if the resolution/frame-rate is the same, it won't impact effects/filters performance :( The M3 Max is roughly equivalent to a Desktop RTX 3090 or 4070 (which is pretty mental for a portable machine). So yes, you can in theory almost double your performance if you build a desktop with an RTX4090 (bearing in mind those cost almost as much as an M1 Max!).

@@DigiDriftZone I really appreciate the explanations. It's starting to make sense although what I don't understand is you mentioned multiple times that the compressed HS HEVC is higher quality. I understand how it would be the same quality at a smaller compression rate but what do you mean higher quality? The image wouldn't look any different or sharper or anything, would it? And for me on a long video where I'm editing out all the little lip smacks and breathes in between sentences. There's hundreds of cuts. I could see how for a lot of people scrubbing with split-second pauses isn't a big deal but for me it's huge.

@@thesahdstudio Let me explain. Imagine you have SI at 500 mbit, that means the entire frame is given 20mbit per frame (assuming 25fps, so divide by 25). Now your face, the only part that's changing, makes up about what, 10% of the frame? -- so your face specifically, is only given 2mbit per frame, that's all. That's not good. Now imagine you have HS at 100mbit, that means it knows what the background is and it uses P frames to calculate the difference from the previous frame and B frames to calculate both previous and next frames. It not only does that, but it does motion prediction, so if your body sways, it references an offset to the previous frame, so it only needs to know changes such as shadows or your lips moving, or edges of a dancing body. So in this situation, each frame is only changing by 10% if there is a full body shot and more like 5% if it's just a talking head. So each frame is not getting 20mbit like with 500mbit SI but it's actually getting the equivalent of 40mbit or even 80mbit per frame as it simply references the background frame instead of storing duplicate data. Now most of these changes are your face, so you're getting 20 to 40x more bitrate on your face than with 500mbit SI - I don't need to explain why that's a good thing :) So in this situation (i.e. most of what you're filming), theoretically you would need 2,000 to 4,000 mbit SI to match the quality of a 100mbit HS (technically about 15% less than those numbers to account for the motion prediction metadata, but you get the point). Crazy huh? Now if you are running with the camera and panning like crazy, and the whole image is changing, then it's a lot more difficult for HS/HEVC to predict this motion - it still does a lot of clever stuff and it can reference previous frames, etc, but the advantages of HS start to reduce drastically, so you may be better off with SI in certain very specific situations - e.g. videos of abstract screensavers where every pixel changes between frame. However on a tripod or even just any stabilised shot, it's not even close. The same logic applies to S, however HS produces higher quality at half the bitrate because it's a lot more clever about motion prediction, it splits the image into a much smaller grid when calculating differences between frames, etc. I hope that helps :)

@DigiDriftZone yeah buddy! It helps a lot. So if you were me, what would you shoot in and what computer do you think is sufficient? Would you shoot an hs? Then make proxies or use prores to have a smooth editing experience? I mean I guess the editing experience is smooth enough... I will have to run some tests and zoom in a bit more... Because to be honest since switching to this SI codec which I've done for the last few videos I do feel like the quality doesn't look quite as good but it's still more than good enough for RU-vid. I also changed so many other variables in each video so thought maybe it was just me. It's starting to make sense though. Still really debating returning this and getting the M1 Max as those seem to be pretty widely available for a reasonable price. How do you think the round plays in? I don't want to take up too much of your time would you think 32 is sufficient?

Me too! So bad... I'm hoping maybe someone watches this who has that hardware or something similar and they can chime in. I don't care about render speeds or benchmarks, I just want that smooth video editing experience!

I have a M1 Max 32gpu and 64gb ram. I just ordered a windows msi laptop with 4090 in it. So not quite desktop but at least the best you can get laptop wise. I am planning to try to compare the machines side by side with a M1 macbook air. If anybody is interested.

Ok I'm still learning all this... had to watch Casey Farms video to learn what it was. But does that only work when you use effects in Fusion?

I sort of lasso the problematic portion of the timeline right click and render in place. You can then decompose if you need to. The one caveat is that you have to create a compound or a fusion clip. Another super helpful thing is to really try to do that stuff towards the end of your process. That way you don't spend hours on stuff that's not going to make the cut. I'm also new to DaVinci resolve. I mostly use it to create online courses. But I'm addicted to Fusion 😂.

@AISkillBoost that's awesome thanks for sharing. Yeah making the compound clip makes sense too. Like you said maybe it's not the best way to do it but as an amateur it makes sense and if it makes the video editing process smooth I like that!!

Great comment and this is aligning with I have been learning. I feel like since I've started going down this rabbit hole I've started to adjust my expectations with what computers, especially laptops, are capable of doing. I DO want to have more fun with effects so maybe a laptop isn't the direction I should go in? Heck for this price I could probably build a decent desktop and buy an Air for on the fly editing. I WOULD love a nice workstation but I spend a lot of time doing comments and writing scripts and ideas so love the nice experience of the Apple laptop too.

@@thesahdstudio I mean I live in Canada that m3 Mac is over $5200 here. You could get a txt 4080 laptop for 2600 Canadian and build a powerful desktop for another 2600 or a used MacBook M2 Max for 2-3k . I bought a MacBook to keep me away from heavy gaming 😂 if I have a gaming beast it’s too tempting for me to dip my toes in the water. I wanted to get into photography so I made the mistake of buying a $2000 camera instead of $1000 camera and $1000 in lenses.. I’m learning the hard way I should be spending less until I know I need more. You have great looking videos and a whole studio everything looks fantastic. So kudos to you and your channel. So I wish I would have bought cheaper camera and better accessories. I wish MacBooks were a little more customizable.. at better price points. You can upgrade a laptop from 16gb to 64-128gb for 160-300 bucks and from 512gb to 2tb for like 80 bucks. The Mac I ideally would want would have 36gb ram but I can’t justify spending thousands more for 18gb ram and some other minor bumps. 😂😂 I’m having hard time identifying what I want too.

@mccubbing23 I would buy an M2 max if I could find it for under 3.5k for sure... Here in the west coast the cheapest I can find is a m1 Max with 16g ram for 3k. Thanks for the compliments on my setup. It's taken me awhile to get here with lots of learning and upgrading bit at least now I appreciate what I have. Because I know exactly why I need it. Good call on the laptop desktop combo. Definitely been thinking about that route. I still have some time to think about it so I'm not going to rush the decision. Thanks for chiming in!

I mean it'll handle it but the extra video encoders on the Max will make the editing experience much nicer. But it also depends on lots of things too, like the codec you shoot video in. I ended up getting a used M1 Max and it's fantastic. Plus I saved thousands of dollars!

@@thesahdstudio thanks for your comment. So end up how much ram u got ?

I got 32gb ram. I know macs can use their SSD hard drives as virtual memory if they need it (which can damage it long term) but I think for my work flow 32 is enough without needing virtual memory. It's been able to handle everything I can throw at it so far!

Yeah you bet, all their laptops should have at least a 30 day return window. I bought during the holidays so it was an extended window which was nice. Yeah the M4's will be similar speed to the M3's with just slight refinements. Not sure it will worth waiting for based on what I've seen if you need a laptop now.

I'm still learning the stuff myself my man... It's nice to have the extra cooling and fans of the pro but I think the Air is surprisingly good. I don't know what camera or video quality you're going to be shooting in but I think they should both do a really good job. I think the MacBook might be a little better though

If you are editing 4k videos that are more than 30 minutes long you'll need the m3 pro

Macbook air m2 is good for short 4k videos

I didn't even know you could do that! Crazy. So... I gotta ask then. Why not shoot in 60fps? What are you doing that you need to do that? That's a crazy different though.

​@@thesahdstudio I'm a Cgi artist, so rendering animation in 30fps and generating at 60 fps using AI saves a lot of time in my workflow.

Edit in ProRes! Everyone is surprised at what can be done on an m1. I do hour long wedding videos in a weekend. They all have massive color correction, effects and transitions. No issues but all footage is in ProRes from Nikon z7 and GoPro

It was: 16-core CPU 40-core GPU 48GB Unified Memory 1TB SSD Storage I went for it!

You're right BUT when you don't have a lot of hard drive space, this can EAT it up fast. My plan is to use smart rendering once I get a fast external SSD.

Haha yeah I hear you buddy. Chasing 4k editing on a laptop has flipped my life around and now I'm on a Mac. Who'da thunk it!? Not me that's for sure.... they're dam sweet to edit on though that's for sure! I think if you learn more about using proxies it might be helpful. You don't need to brute force it like I'm trying to do. You can work smarter. I did a video on proxies awhile back which might help you.

Oh that'd be sick. If I could get my hands on one, I would!

Awesome! Yes this is the kind of comment I want to receive. Thank you. You said in the movie industry or the studio for adding effects and the fun stuff they would not use a mac. So what would they use? Multiple Nvidia GPUs? Huge amounts of RAM? What do you think in particular it is that enables them to play with the fun stuff/effects if you had to guess?

well, when they does the making of vfx, it depends which program, some uses mac and most uses pc, and yes pc(desktop/server) does have multiple gpu. and when rendering, there is companies that has servers or cloud service for that.. or else it'll take ages. Nvidia still the king of gpu atm.. my guesses are, i think most program that were wrote on x86 still having hard-time to fully optomiz and use the mac-chipset to perform well.

My question to you is, why wouldn't I be using Resolve on a Mac? It's the software I like to use and after my testing, it runs better on a Mac than a PC. I am definitely NOT a professional nor do I have the budget of said professional 🤣 I have a Sony zv-e1 camera with h.264/h.265 codec so that's what I'm stuck with for now. And the MacBook M1 Max I currently have makes for a great editing experience! Not sure why you think it wouldn't be!

@thesahdstudio my point is your video looks like the mac is less capable than it is, when Infact it's not getting utilised in its optimal settings. You should try downloading some 6k or 8k prores files and edit them in fcp to show the viewer what the mac is actually capable of, then showing your own footage in premier, that would illustrate just what a difference the codex you use actually makes to the editing process. That's why pro editors stipulate what kind of format they want the footage in, they will request the resolution, bit depth, data rate and codex. That way they know what system and program to edit on.

Resolve is optimized for mac as well. It's been a very long time since the days of unoptimized davinci on apple silicon. Stop drinking the koolaid davinci is better than FCP

Hey man they come with a refund guarantee.... may as well use it. Plus I think Apple and its trillion dollar pockets can afford it.

@@thesahdstudioThey have the money for sure and they tell the customer about the possibility to return products. That is a service what is part of the price of the product. - But I am not so naive to think, that they would lower the prices, if all customers would not return anything.