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It's been a while since the new M1 iMac was announced, but the first YouTube reviews are in.

At the end of April, Apple had an online special event where they announced the new M1 powered multi-coloured iMacs and iPad Pros.

As the new iMacs are starting to become available, it looks like a few lucky YouTubers have got their hands on a machine early and the review videos are starting to appear.

We start with Dave2D who likes the new iMac, but wishes it had a more powerful chip than the M1 you'll find in the 13 inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini.

 

 

An of course no new Apple product review would be complete without Marques Brownlee summing up what he likes and dislikes.

 

 

No doubt there will be many more reviews to follow!

 

Written by
Top BloggerThought Leader

I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.

I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.

Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.

I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!

Current Editing

great house giveaway 2020

2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.

Tour de france 2020
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.

 

BBC snooker the crucible

BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.

amazon kindle BF

Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.

As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.

Plugin Design & Development

I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.

I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.

FCP.co

Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook. 

The Future

I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!

 

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JoeEditor's Avatar
JoeEditor replied the topic: #114546 18 May 2021 15:28
They are pretty, but not pro grade machines. Still waiting for a pro grade M chip Mac.
Stu Wart's Avatar
Stu Wart replied the topic: #114556 19 May 2021 07:28
Yes "Dave2D" ! Still the first line of machines with new procs generation.
ronny courtens's Avatar
ronny courtens replied the topic: #114568 20 May 2021 15:26
Some would say that Youtubers are not really a reference. But I can certify that the M1 is already as "pro" as it can be. The first feature film cut with FCP on a M1 MBP has had picture lock Friday last week and everything went very smoothly.

- 90 minute crime feature
- 23 days shooting (30 hours of footage), 65 days editing
- 1285 video clips, 2443 audio clips on the final timeline
- collaboration via Postlab

That's all I can say for now. The movie is now in post for audio sweetening and grading. If the production company agrees, we may have an interesting case study for the M1 soon.

- Ronny
JoeEditor's Avatar
JoeEditor replied the topic: #114588 21 May 2021 20:36
Not done much 3D modeling on an M1, eh? Very different story.
damiangrady's Avatar
damiangrady replied the topic: #114596 22 May 2021 07:11
What is that story Ben? Keen to know more about your experience.
joema's Avatar
joema replied the topic: #114597 22 May 2021 10:48
The M1 (while very fast on single-thread tasks and video decode/encode) is probably the slowest M-series Apple Silicon CPU that will ever be made. We may be within weeks of Apple formally announcing the M1X which supposedly will have 2x the CPU cores and up to 4x the GPU cores. If correct that would make an M1X laptop faster than the 18-core iMac Pro on virtually all benchmarks -- including GPU.

If the rumors about the upcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro are correct, it will have 128 GPU cores, which might be about 2x faster than an nVidia RTX-3090.

The M1 is all we have now so it has attracted a lot of attention.  But within a few months it will occupy the lower echelon of Apple Silicon performance, which will span vastly upward.

The amazing thing is what the M1 can do, despite being the lowest end of a range of higher-performance upcoming products. Has anyone ever edited a feature film using a PC powered by Intel's entry-level Celeron?

Of course the software must harness the compute assets. On Resolve forums I frequently see professionals with multi-chip Xeon workstations and massive RAM, equipped with two or four nVidia Titan GPUs -- complaining about slow performance.