Mac Studio: Do Creatives Need the M1 Ultra? 

This video gets an A+ from me if for no other reason than the section showing how the M1 Ultra handled editing in realtime as you moved through the timeline and editor functions. This was mentioned in the comments on Luke Milani's channel, but the emphasis has to be on these real world tasks and not just the export times, which really are just a fraction of the time you spend in FCPX. The majority of time is spent applying effects, dragging clips around the timeline, adding transitions, etc. so bravo for showing that. It revealed what I learned with my M1 Pro MacBook - these machines are good, but these editors still slow down noticeably (e.g., can affect your productivity) when working in the timeline.

Dude, besides my appreciation for your thorough testing in real world apps, your set design for this video is stunning, almost addicting to look at. Seriously great job on everything in this video. I especially love when you posted the times for each test with each machine, and you see the app icon on the wall in the background 😍 Great details a designer can appreciate haha

Great video! The lag on the 4k project when you had the 8k footage is because FCPX has to resize the file from 8k to 4k. And when you had a project that matched the resolution of the file, FCPX doesn't have to do anything with it to play it back.

Thank you! You are the only RU-vidr who actually shows the timeline workflow instead of export times in fcpx. God Bless You!

I'm so glad to finally see a review that focuses on the smoothness of editing/playback on the timeline, during color grading, and all the other parts of video editing that are actually editing! Thanks for not obsessing about export times (aka my opportunity to take a walk). :)

This video is beautiful… i know its a spec video for a product but all the shots are lovely.. lighting, graphics, audio, content, information… you can watch it without sound, and understand everything… and not just with CC on..

It's so crazy how animated titles demand so dang much from computers in FCP. It makes my mac pro struggle like no other haha.

Thanks Tyler ☺️ Your videos are always super high quality, and well made. Keep up the fantastic work!

He delivers again🙌 your lighting techniques and your color grades are just looking insane good love your videos 🤩

At first I thought the suggestion for a built in battery was crazy, but having it as a backup/recovery option is kind of brilliant. Makes a ton of sense 🤔

Thank you for comparing against your old computer 🙏 it’s what most of us are probably upgrading from so that’s so helpful

This is why I love and subbed to Tyler's Channel, the best channel for photography benchmarks.

Top notch as always. 👌 The value proposition of this machine is insane, especially considering the ease with which one can sub it into a preexisting setup.

This is the type of real world reviews we need. Thank you for showing the dropped frames etc. most reviewers never mention it at all!🤓

Beautifully done Tyler! 👏

Idk how I haven’t seen any of your videos before. The review was great, but the production on this video is was really impressed me. Subscribed instantly!

great video - thanks for putting in the work

love your accent and the way you introduce products, so clean and straight forward

Yo, that wide shot in front of the window popped. Great colours and great content as usual!

I got a fully spec mac m1 mini when it came out and zero complaints. I'm envious of the card slot and all the extra ports on the new mac studio but I wont be rushing out to upgrade but when I do it will be one of these. Cheers.

Production of the video is really top notch! And I like you showed notbenchmarks but real world experience!

Once again a top review, for this there is a subscription! Keep up the good work! I am a hobby photographer and waiting for my Mac Studio max 2TB + Mac Studio Monitor (delivery mid-May)

I’ve been waiting for this video! ❤️

Great review, and lovely lighting set up, very original 👏

Amazing video, very detailed. Thanks!

very nice "real world work" hands on with this new machine ... also I like the style of the video

Hey @Tyler love this, for my inquiry for the Mac Studio this definitely confirmed it! Thanks Pal

Thanks you Tyler for this very detailed review. I think I'll hold on to my M1 Macbook Pro for now. Plenty fast for only photo related work.

best review on this system so far! 👍thank you

Completely agree with the battery call. I've also wanted a battery in the new iMac. Just enough for 5 minutes, is fine. Long enough for me to unplug, move to the other room... and plug back in. How about a way to just suspend everything into ultra low power mode until you plug back in.

pretty good ! i can only guess how much time and effort you put into such informative, polished videos. thanks!

Thank you Tyler, for not ruining your wonderful videos with nerve wrecking clickbait thumbnails. It's been a pleasure watching your content.

Great video but that lighting is truly masterful, same compliments to the colours.

I don’t understand how you don’t have more subscribers. The quality and cinematography of your videos blow all the RU-vidrs out of the water.

loved that you used the m1 max as a control truly boss move!

I would love to know how you shot the video and exposed it. Have to say it, bloody brilliant.

I do a lot of time lapses, which has my Mac grinding away for hours, while I "try" to do other tasks like video editing, etc. Do you think it's best to use a separate Mac (M1Max Studio or MBP) specifically for that task, or will an Ultra MacStudio with 128GB of memory be sufficient while running multiple processor intensive applications? Would love to know your opinion, thanks! Great videos by the way!

Great vid I have a MBP M1 Max and a 2019 Mac Pro so I will wait to see how the new Mac Pro is. Great Video as Always

Hey thanks a lot for this video!! I was looking for this cross comparison for C1. Much appreciated.

I use the GFX50SII, and I tether to the iPad Pro with the M1, and the photos come in and render a preview extremely quick.

Superbly crafted video detailing what the new Mac Studio can do! Appreciate your clear concise dialogue without a distracting music throughout the review. As a long time MacPro user (I have two of them) I'm now looking at upgrading and retiring my very mature 2012 MacPro. The speed of what you can do with the new studio is truly impressive! QUESTION: Looked at the specs online and one thing I was surprised it doesn't have, is a fibre optic output for connection to audio amps. Using the fragile 1/8 inch analogue headphone o/p doesn't cut it in my books. How are you connecting the audio out - through one of the USBC jacks? Thank you for your time and effort. You sold me on the max! Cheers from Montréal.

Outstanding review

Yes! I’ve been asking for a small amount of battery in iMacs for like a decade for this exact reason. It would be great to have a little battery as a back up incase it gets unplugged or even to just quickly move it from one room to the next.

Great video as always. What FCPX titles plugin are you using around 10:50?

I really appreciate this review! At first, I thought, "Oh great, another Ultra review that's totally unrealistic for most users". So thank you for comparing the Intel and the Max as well! Also, love seeing Sunshine Village in all its glory! Great work. Cheers from Edmonton!

Thanks for the part about FCPX playback through a timeline with effects. I wished you compared that part with M1 Max though. We still don't know how smoother M1 Ultra is

I know this is about the Mac Studio, but I can’t help but notice your new studio. It is amazing. Love the amount of natural light you have. ❤

Awesome review thank you!

You said one thing that make me subscribe: "What's actually matter is can you work with the file". That's 100% solid statement. I don't mind extra 5-10 minutes longer export time. I can go and make myself some coffee or grab some snacks while waiting for the export to finish. Export time is what other reviewers keep mentioning over and over again. How well we work with the file using the machine is far more important than export time, IMO

Other tech reviewers power on the Studio and move the mouse cursor around and call it a day. You actually put it through its paces, excellent content🔥

Excellent video Tyler! It was worth all the extra effort. I was hoping you were going to edit some footage with audio. I have the M1 Max MacBook and also M1 Mac Mini. On both those machines I get a 5 second lag with my waveform visual on the timeline when playing back footage and I can’t work out what’s causing it. Anyhow, keep up the great work 👏

I have a maxed out MacBook Pro M1 Max and creating a bunch of compound clips in fcpx always makes it crash

Very thorough. Thanks.

I've got the M1 Max Studio with 32 core with 64GB of Ram and a 2TB SSD and it's an amazing computer. It was a custom built order.

I still absolutely love my high end iMac Pro, still a workhorse for professional video editing even 4 years later. Already paid for itself countless times by now, very satisfied.

Great vid, thanks, Tyler. Helps a lot.....😎

The thumbnail I voted for. I guess I wasn’t the only. Cool. Great video! Thank you!

Thanks for the real review. Using the machine is far better than a bench mark.

very good information, thanks

Seriously bro! THANK YOU!

Can't Wait To See The New Mac Pro It Is Going To Be Pricey But Will See

Brilliant production quality! Looks amazing! Was this shot on the C70? Thanks

Nice grading on your videos btw!

Not sure if it's possible but can you test this versus the regular mac mini

The best review 👏

Are you using external SSD for rendering, playback and exporting? That could speed it up.

The performance falls down if you add effects that can not be computed in parallel. A simple example is the denoise/sharpen effect in FCPX. This will let your export times explode, and you can have as many cores available as you like, it won't get any faster :-/.

There is supposed to be a better optimized update for FCP coming soon. FYI

I’d argue the Mac Studio isn’t form over function. It hasn’t compromised on function (performance and cooling) for its intended function (making the highest speed much more affordable than before). The upcoming Mac Pro will be bigger, but that’s mainly because (internal) expansion is what it’s about.

Just one quick question what kind of UPS/PowerBackup needed for Mac Studio? Coz they don’t have battery in built.

Fabulous execution of this video! Love the approach! You make some of my favorite videos on the internet. It’s all about subtleties and flow. I love your sensibilities - from design to cinematic expression. Not just another review! Thank you 🙏🏻

I need that beat on the end

I am more than happy with my macbook pro M1 Max !! I updated it with 64GB and 4 TB of storage and I hope It will serve me for next 4-5 years at least

None of the video apps are optimized for the ultra yet. It will be interesting if you do a follow up video in the next few months when updates will be released. And hopefully will see the true power of the ultra scaling up.

What's the camera gear you used here because the visuals are stunning.

I knew the results weren't going to differ a lot from M1 Max (MBP) to M1 Ultra, because the CPU in both chips are the same, only changing the number of cores of both the GPU and CPU. Apps need to be optimized to take advantage of that big number of cores in that very specific architecture which is not yet the standard. Devs won't optimize their apps to run better on the M1 Ultra, cause it would be too expensive for them.

Slightly unrelated but how good are those Sony TOUGH SD cards 🙌🏻 I've broken a camera's sd slot years back when the little strips between the card had developed cracks and ripped the cameras sd pins out.

It would be cool if someone would do a follow up down the line because this is a fairly new desktop. Apple, naturally, never really has their products taking full advantage of their hardware out the gate/have 3rd party software on the same page. Updates later might change or not 🤷‍♂️

Other have reported that the release Final Cut Pro is not actually optimized for Ultra...not the pre-release FCP that Apple used in it's testing in their presentation...

Tyler the most important thing you said was that Final Cut needs to revamp the color grading tools. Hopefully that comes in the next big upgrade 👍🏽 @12:40

15:26 beautiful light for this scene!! show us how you light this... :) before and after... this require a power light because the sunny day on the exterior?

Very informative. What app were you running to see cpu and gpu performance

1 question: how much time to create a 1: 1 preview in lightroom = 100 raw photos / in Mac Studnio Ultra vs Macbook Max ?

Awesome Review Went to an apple store in Melbourne this arvo and the sales person did not know squat about performance of applications in the real world. About to buy A fuji GFX100s (102mp) and it now sounds like the M1max will be just fine. I can live with slightly longer export times.

Thank you for sharing your talent. So in summarizing, creator’s don’t need the Mac studio ultra for video. That being said, how would you spec out the Mac studio to get the job done for video?

Awesome video ! I need some advice .. I plan to create youtube channel and I intend to use Adobe Premier pro or davinci resolve or final cut and max. 4k footage. If i were to pick Studio max vs ultra vs macbook pro, would you say that i should go between studio max or macbook pro ? The main criteria for me is to be able to play the video while editing .. i am not super concerned about if it take 2 minutes vs 4 min when exporting video for youtube ! Please advice ! I am sure like me there are other folks who have similar question and this may help them as well ! Thank you !

I'd love to see such cores sweating being used in Houdini simulations. The only software I know would make such SoC sweat. Haven't found any with such sofware yet but the last m2 pro and max they had such ad in the videos. Ssame for this model.

hows the bluetooth mouse? for the mac mini it really sucks

I very much appreciate the "lots-of-Smart-Objects-resulting-in-a-large-PSB-file" test. That's *exactly* what I was interested in -- thank you!

Amazing video, great job. But 😢 I'm still so pissed I'm stuck in the Adobe ecosystem. All that power and it still chugs whilst doing basic tasks like cloning, brushing, etc. Just insane. 😭

Unfortunately Apple hasn’t released they optimized version of FCP they announced at the keynote. No wonder then, that it stutters sometimes.

Great video again. So, let me get this right: We are all waiting for the Adobe suit to be fully optimised for maximum speed using the M1 Ultra. But to that point, wouldn’t this mean that the M1 Max will become faster as well? You know, the M1 Max that is half the price and we are already so happy with? 🤔 Seems like even when the optimisation happens, the M1 Max is going to be more than enough for 99.9% of users. Thoughts?

Do you only ever edit the original camera codec, or do you sometimes transform to Prores - presumably that's easier?

Curious on what cameras you recorded this video

I work as a cinematographer and often need to edit and color grade. These videos about the Mac studio and it’s ridiculous power makes my choice to get a maxed out 14” MBP easier - the M1 series chips are just insane for what we do.

Killer review and thorough testing. Gives me peace of mind as an m1 max owner. Serious gains but apple silicon in general is the real upgrade here.

Is the workflow using 3d software like blender on the studio decent enough for us average joe designers. Heard mixed feelings about 3d

Hi sir I used mac studio max in premiere pro 2022 play / stope ( Space bar ) not working so what should be do for that pls suggest for soulation

Perfect video editing video for the Mac Studio! You covered exactly what I was looking for. I have not seen anybody show Canon Raw from the R5 in their reviews thank you. FYI, I get the same issue going from Canon R5 8K Raw to a 4k timeline where is slows way down on my M1 Max Macbook, but it performs much better on a 8K timeline. It is strange. Question. How does the Cinema Raw Light from the C70 or other Canon Cameras perform? From what I understand it is a different codec than the R5 uses. Thanks Again.

Love your videos. What tripod was that? I love it? Can you send me a link?