- Hey it's Justin Brown here, from PRIMALVIDEO.
So there's still a lot of hype
around the new 2016 MacBook Pro.
There's a heap of videos comparing it
to the older 2015 model.
We considered doing a video that was specific
to video editing comparing the two,
but there's already quite a few great options
on YouTube as well.
So instead we thought we'd compare the 2016 MacBook Pro
to what a lot of people consider the Windows' equivalent,
which is the Dell XPS 15" 2016 model.
So in this video we're gonna compare the two
for video editing,
but we're also gonna throw in the 2015 MacBook Pro as well.
So this video's gonna be entirely focused
around real world editing.
We're not gonna look at benchmark scores at all,
if you're interested in benchmark scores,
there's a heap of other videos
that will cover the benchmark scores of the three laptops.
We're gonna try to keep this as close to, apples and apples,
or Apples to Dells, as possible.
So we'll be comparing rendering and exporting time
in Adobe Premiere across the board, but we'll also throw
some Final Cut comparisons in there as well.
(techno rock music)
So we'll start out with the specs of the three systems.
The Dell XPS 15" is the 2016 model.
Which has an INTEL Core I7 2.6 Gigahertz Quad Core Processor
16 Gig of DDR4 RAM
and a 2 Gigabyte NVIDIA GTX 960M video card.
And the 2016 MacBook Pro 15"
has an INTEL Core I7 2.7 Gigahertz Quad Core Processor
16 Gig of RAM and a two Gigabyte RADEON PRO 460 video card.
The 2015 MacBook Pro is the 15" model
with an INTEL Core I7 2.5 Gigahertz Quad Core Processor
16 Gig of RAM and a 2 Gigabyte RADEON R9M 370X video card.
So before we started any testing,
we did make sure that the GP rendering was enabled,
or that your Mercury Playback Engine was set to GPU
across all of the systems, so there was Open CL on the Macs,
which was actually enabled by default
once Adobe Premier had been installed.
On the Windows system which was enabling the NVIDIA CUDA,
we actually went through three different sets
of NVIDIA drivers before we could enable it.
So once that was sorted
we copied the exact same project files and all the footage
to the Desktop of each of the three systems.
So what this project contained is a six minute edit
and a two minute edit of a 1080P mixed frame rate,
mixed format, mixed bitrate edit.
Which is something that is pretty common
when you're editing these days.
So the first test we did
was exporting the two minute version of this project
across the three laptops.
The settings we used to export
were the YouTube 1080P preset
built-in to the latest 2017 Adobe Premiere Pro.
(techno rock music)
(timer dings)
And the Dell XPS 2016 was the clear winner
coming in at two minutes 14 seconds.
Followed by the 2016 MacBook Pro at two minutes 55,
and then the 2015 MacBook Pro at three minutes 42.
So we ran the same test again
but using the six minute version of that edit.
And once again, the Dell XPS 2016 came out on top
with an export time of six minutes 45 seconds,
followed by the MacBook Pro 2016
with eight minutes 58 seconds,
followed by 12 minutes 30 seconds on the 2015 MacBook Pro.
So while there wasn't a huge difference
exporting the two minute file across the three,
you can see that exporting a larger file,
exporting the six minute version,
has started to make a big difference.
And if the difference between them is this much
at a six minute export,
then it's gonna be huge for a much larger project.
So for the next test
and to really put these systems under load,
we decided to do a 4K test
and still with Adobe Premiere across the board.
So we created a new 4K project
and we imported four video files that were all shot in 4K.
We scaled these four clips down
and positioned them all within the 4K frame,
and we repeated all the clips
so they would all play continuously to the two minute mark.
And then to take this up a notch further,
we reversed two of the video clips
across the entire length of the two minute clip.
So really what we are exporting here
is one 4K file that's made up of four 4K individual files
all on the screen at once,
where two of them have been reversed
for the entire two minute clip.
The settings we used to export across the board
were the YouTube 4K preset built-in
to the latest 2017 Adobe Premiere Pro.
The Dell XPS 15" 2016 took 18 minutes and 51 seconds
to export the timeline.
The 2016 MacBook Pro took 58 minutes and 42 seconds,
whereas the 2015 MacBook Pro took one hour and 20 minutes.
So that's a massive difference between the three.
So what we thought we'd do next
is bring Final Cut into the mix, Final Cut 10.
So what we did is we recreated that 4K timeline,
that two minute timeline that had four 4K video files
all on the screen on a 4K project,
where two of them had been reversed
for the entire two minute clip.
We also turned off background rendering in Final Cut 10
so that there was no caching or no pre-rendering done
before we went to export.
Then we ran two separate exports of this timeline.
The first was just using the Share to YouTube preset,
set to 4K, which you're probably thinking
"Yep that's gonna be different
"between that and Adobe Premiere."
So we also sent out via Compressor
and we keyed in the exact same settings,
the same bitrate, the same resolution,
everything exactly the same in Adobe Premiere.
We made that same preset in Compressor.
And here are the results.
The 2015 MacBook Pro did the export from Final Cut
in four minutes 55 seconds,
and via Compressor in 6 minutes 20.
And the 2016 MacBook Pro did the export from Final Cut
in three minutes 27 and five minutes 13 through Compressor.
So comparing those export times,
and again with background rendering turned off,
Final Cut vs Adobe Premiere, there is a massive difference
in export time between the two.
So these results are pretty interesting
as definitely, definitely not what I expected.
I can't believe that there's such a huge difference
in exporting from Final Cut,
or even exporting from Final Cut via Compressor,
vs exporting what is essentially the same timeline
in Adobe Premiere, even on the same systems.
Now I'm someone who uses both of these editing programs
pretty much every week.
All of my corporate and client work
is done in Adobe Premiere
and all the videos on this channel are done in Final Cut.
So it's pretty interesting to compare what is essentially
the same timeline being exported between the two
using the exact same systems
So in regards to the performance
or the smoothness of editing,
in that 4K project,
across Adobe Premiere and Final Cut,
across all three systems the Adobe Premiere project
wasn't able to be played even at 1/8th quality.
In Final Cut we were able to playback
that 4K timeline smoothly,
it definitely had quality loss,
we did have to set Performance as the setting
instead of Quality,
so I'm not sure how much of the quality hit,
it didn't look great,
but it was definitely editable
and enough that you could color grade
and work with the footage.
So I really didn't expect
that there would be such a huge difference in export time,
for exporting what's essentially the same timeline
in Final Cut and in Adobe Premiere.
It's clear to say
that if you're going to be using Adobe Premiere
then you should look at the Dell XPS 15"
over the MacBook Pro.
If you're already a Mac user
and you wanna save a heap of time on your exports,
then maybe Final Cut could be the answer for you.
Now if you're looking for a great comparison
with full benchmarks and everything specifically
between the 2016 MacBook Pro and the 2015 MacBook Pro,
then check out the video that's linked on-screen now.
I'll see you soon.