about a month ago i decided to see if this new 16-inch m1 max
macbook pro could make me throw my beloved windows desktop off my balcony
needless to say i've been sort of stuck and kind of tied to the whole windows
desktop computer setup for pretty much my entire career i've had a lot of kind of personal fears
and hesitations with adapting a laptop into my workflow as my full-time workstation but i've
now been using this thing 100 exclusively for my workflow for the last month or two
so let's go ahead and talk about and break down how it's gone any major issues annoyances
performance and side-by-sides all of that stuff that you guys have been waiting to see
let's quickly talk about the pc itself i i love this thing it's not the fastest or like the most
built out you know super computer but it's no joke i mean it's powerful enough to handle everything
i throw at it it has semi-outdated hardware but what's interesting to me and kind of prompted this
whole switch and creating these videos is that in today's current market with computer parts it
would take a pretty significant amount of money to upgrade and have any real performance improvements
so this is what the desktop is up against this is the 16-inch m1 max macbook pro with the
32 core gpu 64 gigabytes of unified memory and a 2 terabyte ssd okay so the first thing we're going
to do is a side by side render or export test with both the machines the project we're going
to be working with is my latest youtube video which if you haven't seen it be sure to click the
little card up over here it's a video i did about journaling this is a roughly 10 minute timeline
it's mostly sony a7s iii uh 4k 24 10 bit 422 h.265 so this is really compressed footage it's
what i shoot with exclusively for youtube just because of the space savings smaller file sizes
but it's really hard for computers to encode and decode so i think this is a good test to put these
two machines up against this is a pretty packed timeline we have various amounts of mixed media
titles overlays things like that when it comes to the color grading of this video i would definitely
say it's uh on the more complex side uh a good amount of nodes lots of ofx various power windows
this is definitely going to be pretty taxing on the system after this first test i'm going to show
you guys just how big of a difference it makes to do a much simpler color grade but for this first
test and this is exactly how i grade pretty much all of my youtube videos so this is the perfect
bass line in my mind so what i'm gonna do is export both of these videos to an h.265 mov file
i'm gonna be doing these tests with the macbook on battery power just to make things interesting
okay so we'll go ahead and get these two cued up and three two one go alright off we go
okay so we're back the video on the windows desktop exported in 13 minutes 19 seconds
and we have 11 minutes and 34 seconds on the macbook again this is running on battery
power that's a pretty impressive difference considering that this is a fully built out desktop
versus a laptop now as i mentioned before the amount of grading that i have in this project
really really does slow it down so i've created a duplicate timeline of this exact youtube video uh
with a much more simplified color grade on each of the shots we have four nodes here very very
basic sort of balance contrast saturation hsl's a conversion lut and some sharpening this is like
very standard i think what most people would kind of be doing and three two one go
and right away uh i think you'll be able to see this is rendering significantly faster real quick
while uh this video is finishing exporting up on the windows pc it's already done on the macbook
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the test is done and uh like i mentioned before it made a huge difference to simplify the color grade
on this project i think this is a better example and more comparable to some of the videos that you
guys have probably watched about these machines on the pc we have four minutes 31 seconds on the
macbook we have three minutes and 24 seconds that's that's just mind-blowing and it's at 18
battery life the likelihood is that this thing was probably in low power mode if you guys don't know
you can actually change the power mode of these macbooks in the system preferences when you're on
battery life versus connected to the power adapter uh before we move into the next test i'm gonna go
ahead and plug this in let it charge you up just a little bit so for this next export test i wanna
pull up the project that i shot for prada just a few months back if you guys haven't seen that
i shot a cool little film for the release of one of their new men's fragrances so again click the
little card up here to go check that out this is a roughly uh let's see three minute timeline this
project was shot pretty much entirely on the red komodo in 6k raw and we also have a little bit of
clips from the sony fx6 this is a pretty tough project here's the thing as you just saw before
the amount of grading and sort of the complexness of what's going on in each of the shots this shot
the node tree is an absolute mess but i mean there's just there's a ton going on not to
mention we also have some group post-clip effects i think you'll see that this project it takes a
second to render out even though it's only three minutes long there is a few sound effects on this
project that are just randomly missing somehow but ignore that okay and here we go three two one
okay so wow uh the pc finished out at 16 minutes 47 seconds on the macbook
10 minutes and 15 seconds that is a pretty impressive difference wow what matters to me
so much more than how quickly a video will render out is the real world performance like how well
does it scrub am i able to play back a timeline in full resolution i don't want to have to deal
with proxies i don't want to have dropped frames i don't have to turn off any effects
while i'm editing i want something that's going to allow me to as fluidly as possible get my ideas
out and onto the screen so again i have the journaling video project opened up here so just
to show you guys this is a 4k resolution timeline now most of the time you wouldn't want to do this
in order to get the best editing performance you can drop that resolution down to 1080p but then
export at 4k but this is playing back in 4k here so let's slide the playhead around and you know
this is pretty good it's not perfect it's dropping a little bit of frames as we scrub let's go ahead
and go to a random point on the timeline here maybe where we got a bunch of titles popping up
and let's hit play and see if we get full playback there we go 24 frames per second no dropped frames
we got some titles coming up here so this is going to be interesting oh stutters a little bit
picks back up though motion animations working smoothly let's go to the intro
a little stutter in the beginning and it picks up so this may not seem all that impressive
like okay cool full resolution 4k playback but keep in mind like i showed you guys there's a
pretty heavy grade on all of these shots i'll pull up the duplicate timeline that
has the simplified color grade and we'll try the same test again starting from the intro
boom instantly full playback let's go ahead and scrub around much more responsive yeah
this is like no drop frames whatsoever gotta get the mic in here a little bit more okay
so this is the timeline that has the complex grade let's go ahead and scrub around immediately
not too too responsive it's not terrible but let's go ahead and start off the intro just hit play
oh it's dropping frames it's struggling to keep up here we're at 24 now dropping frames there let's
go ahead and switch over to the duplicate timeline simple color grade scrub around
uh this is noticeable this actually definitely does not seem as responsive as the macbook so
that's that's interesting all right let's go ahead and hit play at the beginning
yep seeming to play back fine it's not dropping frames in the same spots that it was initially
not bad as mentioned in my initial video with the switch i did have some pretty big concerns with
long-term stability of the whole system issues with external hard drives i am still using those
connecting disconnecting cables frequently coming into docket here at the desk i've been honestly
shocked at how rock solid the whole system feels no issues with hard drives the system
wakes nearly instantly when you open the lid which i don't know something about that is just
really satisfying pretty regularly i found myself going nearly the entire day on a single charge
maybe plugging it in like one time if i was doing a lot of rendering or exporting but easily being
able to get a solid five to six plus hours of intensive editing which is it's crazy the
screen size considering it's a laptop hasn't felt restrictive at all almost to the point that i've
lately kind of preferred working outside of the office the keyboard and trackpad are truly i think
probably the best i've ever used on a laptop i can honestly go on and on about how enjoyable it's
been to work on this device because i don't know frankly it kind of boggles me because i've never
been so impressed in so many aspects of adapting a new piece of equipment into my workflow this
macbook has pretty much proven to me that the days of the desktop the custom pcs are kind of gone
that comes with a pretty big asterisk but flat out this is just a professional device and really
deserves the badge of macbook pro but the whole point of this video is not to convince you guys
that this is what you need you know the m1 max in order to create good videos the truth is there
are plenty of videos out there that show that the base model m1 macbooks are more than capable for i
think 90 of creators and frankly that's just kind of amazing and insane to think about that these
base model apple macbooks are capable of being like more than good enough editing workstations
for creative professionals of course if this is your full-time thing and you want to maximize
your time and efficiency and have the fastest best performance then by all means go buy a spec
out model all that aside i'm happy and excited to now officially say that this macbook pro is going
to be my full-time workstation so back to uh my pc going off the balcony yeah probably not throwing
it off the balcony but i'll probably end up kind of rebuilding it into a smaller form factor
smaller case keep it around there's some pc games and stuff that i like to play it's always kind of
nice to have a windows computer for that unless somebody maybe wants to buy it comment down below
hopefully you guys found this video interesting be sure to give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it
you want to see more computer stuff subscribe if you haven't already i'll see you in the next video
you