Apple Announce M1 Ultra Powered Mac Studio and 27 Inch 5K Studio Display

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I guess Apple was listening
digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2020/06/12/the-missing-mac/

It's worth noting that the 27" iMacs are now gone (for now?) and that the only Intel left is the Mac Pro.

I really wish there were a 27" iMac M1Max, M1Pro option.
Otherwise, the base Mac Studio with 27" monitor prices at just about $3600. Although that's not bad considering what the 2017 iMac Pro cost, there's no 27" iMac 2020 i7 was about $2300 or so.

I am glad to be freed from the obligation to buy an Apple display personally. I have an 5120 × 2880 iMac Pro sitting next to an old Apple 2560 x 1440 Thunderbolt display. I have to put my face uncomfortably close to the display to be able to tell the difference in resolution. My eyes just aren't that good. I would much rather buy a much larger 4k display so I can put some of those extra pixels to use in Final Cut's interface without it being too tiny for me to see. Does anyone have any good recommendations for large displays for this? A non-editor friend of mine recommended a Gigabyte AORUS FV43U 43" 4k Gaming monitor. Does anyone else have experience with that or a similar large size gaming Monitor or TV as a primary display for Final Cut?

Hello,

could someone tell me if the Mac Studio with M1 Max should be powerful enough to process 4K 10bit 50fps material without proxies, and of course without frame drops at playback or spinning beach ball? Thanks in advance for your reply!

Hello,

could someone tell me if the Mac Studio with M1 Max should be powerful enough to process 4K 10bit 50fps material without proxies, and of course without frame drops at playback or spinning beach ball? Thanks in advance for your reply!

No one knows yet, because it depends on the codec you are working with. ProRes? Sure. Something else? Who knows?

Bartbo wrote:

Hello,

could someone tell me if the Mac Studio with M1 Max should be powerful enough to process 4K 10bit 50fps material without proxies, and of course without frame drops at playback or spinning beach ball? Thanks in advance for your reply!

If you tell me the exact codec specifications, I could try it on my M1 Max MacBook Pro 16. IOW camera, frame rate, bit rate, bit depth, etc. If you aren't sure, use the 3rd-party tool MediaInfo or Invisor: 
apps.apple.com/us/app/mediainfo/id510620098?mt=12
apps.apple.com/us/app/invisor-media-file...or/id442947586?mt=12

Or you could upload a brief test clip to a file sharing service and I can test that.

Thank you, both Oliver and Joema, for your reply. I'm filming with a Sony A7SIII at 4K 10bit 4.2.2 SCineTone. It's only a few months ago that I even held a mirrorless camera for the first time, so I'm still learning a lot. For instance, I'm not quite sure what codecs are.

Joema, I uploaded one of my clips on this WeTransfer-link. I would really appreciate it if you would check out if your M1 Max can easily edit this in FCPX without te use of proxy's. Thanks in advance!

we.tl/t-ozTm5sqiuj

Bartbo wrote:

Thank you, both Oliver and Joema, for your reply. I'm filming with a Sony A7SIII at 4K 10bit 4.2.2 SCineTone....would really appreciate it if you would check out if your M1 Max can easily edit this in FCPX without te use of proxy's. Thanks in advance!...

I tested it on three machines, a 2017 10-core Vega 64 iMac Pro, a 2017 top-spec iMac 27 and a 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro 16. The iMac Pro and M1 Max were running Monterey 12.2.1 and FCP 10.6.1, the iMac 27 was running Catalina 10.15.7 and FCP 10.5.2.

The clip was Quicktime MOV, AVC (ie H264) UHD 4k/50, 10-bit 4:2:2, 2 reference frames, format profile=High@L5.2. I assume that was originally from an A7SIII using 10-bit 4:2:2 XAVC-S in a MP4 wrapper.

In general the M1 Max did OK without proxies. It's not perfectly smooth but most editors would find it OK for a single stream. If it was multicam, maybe not. As typical with FCP, the viewer update rate when skimming in the event browser was fast, slower when skimming in the timeline, and update rate when moving the playhead in the timeline was slower still. However all those would be acceptable to most editors.

Responsiveness when issuing JKL commands and switching from forward to reverse at 4x speed was a bit laggy but probably good enough. Switching the viewer to "better performance" made a small improvement but it was minor.

By contrast I would classify that clip as unusably slow on the iMac Pro without proxies, and almost unusable on the 2017 iMac 27. The iMac was likely a little faster because Intel's Quick Sync accelerator works better than Apple's 1st-gen accelerator in the T2 chip of the iMac Pro.

Compared to those machines the M1 Max is vastly faster and smoother but on very difficult codecs like that one, it's not like editing ProRes or an All-Intra codec. The A7SIII can do 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 XAVC S-I, which produces larger files but is smoother to edit. The similar XAVC-I codec (MXF format) from our FX6 cameras is even smoother, almost like ProRes on the M1 Max, and usable on the iMac Pro without proxies.

Wauw, Joema. Thank you so much for all the effort you took in answering my question. I really appreciate it! So if I'm correct, I can learn two things from what you're saying:

1. The M1 Max could satisfactory process my A7SIII video files giving my current codec, but not extremely smooth.
2. I could film in a different codec so the files are easier to process cq edit. This is something I could change on my camera.

Are these conclusion correct?

Yes, correct. I just re-tested several A7SIII codecs on FCP 10.6.1 on an iMac Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro 16. 
Tested:

- 4k/23.98 10-bit 4:2:2 XAVC S-I (All Intra)
- 4k/23.98 10-bit 4:2:2, XAVC-S (H264)
- 4k/23.98 8-bit 4:2:0 XAVC-S (H264)
- 4k/23.98 10-bit 4:2:2 XAVC-HS (HEVC)
- 4k/23.98 10-bit 4:2:0 XAVC-HS (HEVC)

On the iMac Pro only the XAVC S-I format was usable without proxies. On the M1 Max they were all usable but the XAVC S-I (All Intra) format was even smoother.

The exact behavior and smoothness will vary between machines and NLEs. E.g, the same codecs on an x86 2019 iMac 27 or x86 MacBook Pro 16 might be smoother than the iMac Pro since those machines have a recent version of Intel's Quick Sync accelerator. However they are still not nearly as smooth as the M1 Max.

That said, there are some codecs such as the DJI 5120x2700 29.97 fps 8-bit 4:2:0 which is a bit laggy even on the M1 Max.

Hi Joema, thanks again.Your reply let me to further dive into all these codecs and as far I understand (from several YouTubers) "the way to go" on the Sony A7SIII is XAVC-S (H264), since the other codecs lack some options like filming in 100fps and such. 

But the most important thing I hear from you is that you can edit these H264-files without proxies and pretty "smooth" with an M1 Max machine. I was thinking on ordering the Mac Studio M1 Max 32-core with 64GB. Does that equal or even top the MacBook Pro 16 you used? Thank again for all the effort you took to help me!

Since we are mentioning GB.
I am working with 1080 and maybe and not often with 2K.
I am planning on ordering the 32GB M1 Max version which I think should be more than enough for my needs.
Right ?

Bartbo wrote:

Hi Joema, thanks again.Your reply let me to further dive into all these codecs and as far I understand (from several YouTubers) "the way to go" on the Sony A7SIII is XAVC-S (H264), since the other codecs lack some options like filming in 100fps and such.

If you need native 120 fps, yes XAVC S-I will not do that. However for all other cases my preference is XAVC S-I because it's smoother to edit, even on the M1 Max. I never know if my material will be edited on an M1 Max or somebody else on the post production team might use a regular machine. However the M1 Max is smooth enough on 4k/23.98 10-bit 4:2:2 XAVC-S and XAVC-HS that you can generally get by without proxies, at least for single-cam material. 

Bartbo wrote:

..But the most important thing I hear from you is that you can edit these H264-files without proxies and pretty "smooth" with an M1 Max machine. I was thinking on ordering the Mac Studio M1 Max 32-core with 64GB. Does that equal or even top the MacBook Pro 16 you used?...

That should be about equal to the M1 Max on the MacBook Pro 16, but 3rd-party benchmarks are not yet available. In about 5 weeks I will have an M1 Ultra Mac Studio and test it then vs the other machines.

Albo wrote:

Since we are mentioning GB.
I am working with 1080 and maybe and not often with 2K.
I am planning on ordering the 32GB M1 Max version which I think should be more than enough for my needs.
Right ?

If you are working with 1080p, almost any recent x86 Mac should handle that. But increasingly 4k is the production standard, even if distribution is mostly 1080p. It's possible over the several-year-life of a new machine, that trend will increase. An M1 Max (whether MacBook Pro or Mac Studio) should be able to handle most variants of single-cam 4k H264 and HEVC 4k without proxies, should that need arise. Even the regular M1 and M1 Pro can handle much of that.

Thank you Joema,
I can do most of my work on an iMac mid-2017.
I am at the point where rendering and working with a few apps photo and vector slows it down quite a lot.
I was looking at the mac mini but only 16GB. Might as well upgrade to mac Studio.
I will indeed be working in 2K and distribute in 1080.