Yes, the best software encoding easily beats usual hardware encoding. But much of the time, hardware encoding is good enough.
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All iPads 4k encoding speed: Ipad Air 3 vs. 10.5 pro or 11 pro?
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The A10X is a top end chip still, and it’ll be supported for a while as the A12 will too.
The iPad Air is great I’m sure you’ll be very happy with it.
What kind of 4K video are you editing? From what device, and what video specs? Just curious.
Oh and, Lumafusion is awesome. I wish Adobe Rush would offer a purchase license like that. Adobe rush forces you to pay a $9.99 per month for cloud storage plan, why they think I’d want cloud storage with a 1TB iPad is beyond me. I’m seriously tired of Adobe and there silly marketing.
I’d rather pay Lumafusion $20 bucks, or use free iMovie any day.
I’d rather pay Lumafusion $20 bucks, or use free iMovie any day.
I do occasional photo edits (not an expert by any means) and had a Photoshop licence for my Mac. It’s old now though but I didn’t bother paying for an update with the subscription. I will transition away.
I know Photoshop is coming to the iPad but I’m sure their pricing will suck. I just paid for Affinity Photo and it looks like it will be sufficient for my non-Pro needs.
I’m glad to see that iPad / iOS / ARM / Apple is shaking things up because Adobe was getting too big for its britches.
I think it is incredible how far mobile devices have come. And you can actually get by, and do real stuff without a actual laptop, or computer. Mobile software will get better, mobile gaming, hopefully iOS for iPads will become better soon too.
I had a serious desktop, that I just wasn’t using much after getting an iPad.
Have you always owned iPads? Or was your gen 2 your first?
My Gen 2 was my first.... as in the iPad 2.
I passed on the original iPad because there was very little support and it was crippled in terms of the specs. When they improved the SoC and doubled the RAM in the iPad 2, I bought that.
And then I waited for a 2 GB model with fast SoC before I bought again, and that was the iPad Air 2. Then I waited again for another RAM increase and big performance upgrade, but that model - the 10.5" iPad Pro - cost too much so I just waited. However, when the Air 3 was released and the 10.5" Pro dropped so much in price, that is when I bought. I was very disappointed in the 2 GB RAM spec of the 2017 and 2018 iPads, which is why I didn't bother with those. Plus, the performance improvements weren't so great. Had the Air 3 been released without a big price drop on the Pro, I probably would have bought the Air 3.
I'm getting more use out of the 10.5" than I was originally predicting. It has a smaller but nonetheless technically full size keyboard, and it's actually fairly decent, yet it retains the flexibility of an iPad. I still can't really use it for most of my work, but with the decent keyboard with 18 mm keyspacing and the bigger screen, it's much better for surfing and other things than the 9.7" iPads. (The keyboard for the 9.7" Pro is just too small too.) It actually has nothing to do with performance. My iPad benches faster than my 2017 12" MacBook, but I use the MacBook for work on the go due to software support and trackpad support.
However, my dual 27" screen iMac setup is still my primary machine, mainly because of screen space and again because of software and proper mouse support.
So I just bought LumaFusion on my iPad Pro 10.5” and imported a few 4Kp30 h.265 HEVC clips into it. These are clips from the iPhone 7 Plus, so 8-bit and not as complex as some of the HEVC out there, but still HEVC nonetheless.
The app when simple editing and moving clips around is extremely smooth, and far smoother than it really should be.
The only issue is scrubbing through them really quickly can get a little jumpy. Moderate speed scrubbing is fine, but when it’s really fast scrubbing it is it’s not so smooth. In contrast, 1080p24 HEVC 8-bit (from iPhone XR) is buttery smooth regardless of the scrubbing speed. Note that although scrubbing at high speed through 4K HEVC may not be perfectly smooth, the app interface itself remains very smooth. Very slick actually.I don’t have an 11” here to compare, but my guess is the 11” would scrub through the 4Kp30 HEVC clips more smoothly. I didn’t try h.264, but I suspect both 1080p and 4K h.264 would be perfectly fine on both the 10.5” and the 11”.
Real-time playback with text overlays and transitions is also perfect on this A10X. I didn’t do anything particularly demanding, just some very light YouTube tech vlogger type text overlays and simple transitions, partially because I don’t know how to use this application fully yet since I’ve only been playing with it for half an hour, but nonetheless it played back very clean without need for rendering first.
So, put it this way: Working on a fanless iPad with LumaFusion and iPhone 8-bit 4K HEVC video is way better than working on an iMac a decade ago with Final Cut Express. For Final Cut Express you pretty much had to convert even h.264 to DV and then work from there, with stutteriness, whereas on the two year-old 10.5” iPad Pro, it’s working with h.265 with relative ease. But yeah, as you suggested I suspect the 11” Pro would be smoother during the editing process. Can you confirm that?
The other thing is it’s annoying to do this with just my fat finger. Having a Pencil should make things more pleasant, partially because of the size of the controls on-screen.
BTW, during this period, I’ve just been on battery power, and have just a few percent of battery life. The iPad isn’t even warm. Frickin’ amazing.
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I was editing 4k30p video from my Sony A7iii. Recording was done at 100mbps using XAVC-S codec. Tried the both HLG and standard video and both worked well.
Also tested video shot with Iphone XR at 4k60 but I am uncertain at which mbps the video is recorded.
XAVC-S is still h.264, and not h.265 HEVC.
According to Wikipedia, XAVC-S is level 5.2 AVC, which is more complex than lesser levels, but my guess is it's still considerably easier to deal with than most h.265 HEVC, although you were also recording at 100 Mbps.
How was high speed scrubbing? I found with iPhone 1080p24 h.265 HEVC it was ultra smooth on my iPad Pro 10.5" in LumaFusion, but with iPhone 4Kp30 (which isn't uber high bitrate) it was a bit more stuttery for scrubbing at high speed. Scrubbing smoothness was good up to moderate speeds though. Not bad for HEVC on an iPad.
It stutters a little bit when scrolling but I would say it feels pretty instant when you stop to a location where you want to go.
I did also try stacked filters and they work well.
As a sidenote I also tried the Premiere Rush and as with the Lightroom vs the other apps I feel that preserving the highlights and bringing up the shadows gives more natural results there.
Holy frickin' crap!
On my 10.5" iPad Pro, using LumaFusion, I just loaded up THREE 4K HEVC 8-bit videos recorded from iPhones, ranging from 22 to 45 Mbps as simultaneous layered video tracks. Then I added a bunch of cheesy effects to the tracks, colour graded a track, did some zooming for two of the tracks, and added a couple of transitions to the third layer and speeded it up to 2X.
The clips were of different lengths, so depending upon where in the sequence it was, it ranged from 1 to 3 simultaneous tracks. Scrubbing through this got a bit jumpy when 3 tracks were running simultaneously, but real-time playback was always smooth as butter. Wow. Very impressive.
Total length of time is just over 15 seconds. Then I exported the file to 4K HEVC 8-bit 30 fps, and the render took only 17 seconds, almost real time. I also tried exporting to 4K h.264 30 fps, and it was also 17 seconds.
Those were with the standard video quality setting. I also tried 4K HEVC again but with "Quality", "Extreme", and "Ultra" video quality settings, and they all were the same 17 seconds. So, it seems like it's all hardware encoding regardless of the 5 different settings I tried.
Whatever Apple has added to this A10X GPU is remarkable. Same goes for LumaFusion.
On my 10.5" iPad Pro, using LumaFusion, I just loaded up THREE 4K HEVC 8-bit videos recorded from iPhones, ranging from 22 to 45 Mbps as simultaneous layered video tracks. Then I added a bunch of cheesy effects to the tracks, colour graded a track, did some zooming for two of the tracks, and added a couple of transitions to the third layer and speeded it up to 2X.
The clips were of different lengths, so depending upon where in the sequence it was, it ranged from 1 to 3 simultaneous tracks. Scrubbing through this got a bit jumpy when 3 tracks were running simultaneously, but real-time playback was always smooth as butter. Wow. Very impressive.
Total length of time is just over 15 seconds. Then I exported the file to 4K HEVC 8-bit 30 fps, and the render took only 17 seconds, almost real time. I also tried exporting to 4K h.264 30 fps, and it was also 17 seconds.
Those were with the standard video quality setting. I also tried 4K HEVC again but with "Quality", "Extreme", and "Ultra" video quality settings, and they all were the same 17 seconds. So, it seems like it's all hardware encoding regardless of the 5 different settings I tried.
Whatever Apple has added to this A10X GPU is remarkable. Same goes for LumaFusion.
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9to5mac iPad Air 3 review:
LumaFusion video export (at the 11:48 mark):
8'13" - iPad Pro 11" (2018)
9'04" - iPad Air (2019)
9'34" - iPad (2018)
LumaFusion video export (at the 11:48 mark):
8'13" - iPad Pro 11" (2018)
9'04" - iPad Air (2019)
9'34" - iPad (2018)
I don’t see myself upgrading to another iPad until 2022.....it would be perfect timing.....but I do need to see a real overhaul of the current iOS iPad interface/UI to even consider the next big move......iPad is the one Apple device that I continue to use......
I thought exact the same last year so i opted for the 10.5’ instead and save some money. Maybe i regret it in the future but for now it seems that for once i made the right choice lol.
You can get an A12X, and 6GB of ram with USB-C too in a nice 11” package.
They just charge a premium for it.
$1329 with cellular brand new and unlocked seemed like a steal to me.
I have now definitely decided I won’t be bothering to get a non-linear video editor on my iMac. I had been contemplating getting Final Cut at one point just to play with, but I don’t need all its features, and I didn’t feel like dealing with its complexity and spending the cash. LumaFusion is going to be sufficient, esp. once Apple expands the file system support on these iPads. I’m still impressed on how well this iPad Pro 10.5” works for this purpose. Also, now that I’ve used LumaFusion on the iPad, I’d probably hate Final Cut on my 12” MacBook. Online tutorials show how the scrubbing with native 4K files can be quite painful on such Core M machines. To overcome this they suggest creating proxy media, etc. but it just adds irritating extra steps, that takes a long time too, and wastes storage space and battery life. There don’t seem to be any need for these extra steps on the iPad Pro.
For my next iPad Pro I guess I will have to go for something with more storage then. I suspect 128 GB will suffice since my editing needs are light, but somehow I’m not optimistic the entry level tier will be 128 GB in 2022 or whatever. So, I’ll probably have to get the 256 GB model, but that’s fine too. As long as it has A14X with 6 GB RAM, it is going to be sweet.
One might argue that 11” might be a bit small for video editing, but if absolutely needed I could use an external monitor too.
For my next iPad Pro I guess I will have to go for something with more storage then. I suspect 128 GB will suffice since my editing needs are light, but somehow I’m not optimistic the entry level tier will be 128 GB in 2022 or whatever. So, I’ll probably have to get the 256 GB model, but that’s fine too. As long as it has A14X with 6 GB RAM, it is going to be sweet.
One might argue that 11” might be a bit small for video editing, but if absolutely needed I could use an external monitor too.
Yeah but only in the 1TB model and i always buy the base model, i don't need 1TB for sure, especially if despite all of that power and USB it still is, for my use, just simple a "big iPhone", not real a computer. For that price I would buy 2 or 3 ipads pro 10.5' lol.
It’s all about what you need, and require. If your happy, and you’re getting by just fine on a device with just a little less ram then that’s good, iPad Pro 2nd gen is no slouch. And the overly high price premium wouldn’t be worth it for you in that case. Obviously phone sales, and tablet sales are a little down. People are keeping devices on a average of about 4 years.
Exactly, so i maintain that i said. If Apple put 6GB RAM on IPads Pros last year maybe i bought one. The other user probably know too that the 1Tb model has 6GB of RAM but we were talking about the base models. Paying the price for 1Tb storage just for that would not be smart in our situation. It will be more expensive than my laptop. 1739 euros it’s a lot of money, almost 2000$.
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My results vs Macs:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/hevc-encoding-2017-12-macbook.2178209/#post-27294212
I don’t have Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder, so I just used QuickTime.
Sony Nature Camp 2’07” video - 76 Mbps 4K 10-bit 59.94 fps
MacBook (QuickTime 10.5 Mojave HEVC export): Forever. Not feasible. Probably was 10-bit encode (software)
iPad Pro (LumaFusion 1.7.7 HEVC 30 fps export): About 2 minutes, converted to 8-bit I believe.
Sony Nature Camp 2’07” video - 79 Mbps 4K 8-bit 59.94 fps
2017 MacBook Core m3-7Y32 (QuickTime 10.5 Mojave HEVC export): 8’37”
2017 iMac Core i5-7600 (QuickTime 10.5 Mojave HEVC export): 4’52”
2017 iPad Pro A10X (LumaFusion 1.7.7 HEVC 59.94 fps export): 3’51”
2017 iPad Pro A10X (LumaFusion 1.7.7 HEVC 30 fps export): 2’03”
So, for a similar video, the MacBook would encode a one hour 4K 8-bit HEVC clip in about 4-5 hours, assuming the MacBook didn’t overheat. Note though that this was a simple transcode. I don’t know what a complex video edit would take to render.
Note also that the MacBook encode was the second time I did it. The first time I didn’t time it exactly, but it was faster. So, it slowed down the 2nd time, possibly due to throttling. Do such hardware encoders commonly throttle?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/hevc-encoding-2017-12-macbook.2178209/#post-27294212
I don’t have Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder, so I just used QuickTime.
Sony Nature Camp 2’07” video - 76 Mbps 4K 10-bit 59.94 fps
MacBook (QuickTime 10.5 Mojave HEVC export): Forever. Not feasible. Probably was 10-bit encode (software)
iPad Pro (LumaFusion 1.7.7 HEVC 30 fps export): About 2 minutes, converted to 8-bit I believe.
Sony Nature Camp 2’07” video - 79 Mbps 4K 8-bit 59.94 fps
2017 MacBook Core m3-7Y32 (QuickTime 10.5 Mojave HEVC export): 8’37”
2017 iMac Core i5-7600 (QuickTime 10.5 Mojave HEVC export): 4’52”
2017 iPad Pro A10X (LumaFusion 1.7.7 HEVC 59.94 fps export): 3’51”
2017 iPad Pro A10X (LumaFusion 1.7.7 HEVC 30 fps export): 2’03”
So, for a similar video, the MacBook would encode a one hour 4K 8-bit HEVC clip in about 4-5 hours, assuming the MacBook didn’t overheat. Note though that this was a simple transcode. I don’t know what a complex video edit would take to render.
Note also that the MacBook encode was the second time I did it. The first time I didn’t time it exactly, but it was faster. So, it slowed down the 2nd time, possibly due to throttling. Do such hardware encoders commonly throttle?
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How does it feel on the i5 Kaby lake rendering through the timeline of the 4K 60fps footage, compared to rendering the timeline on the IPad Pro in Luma Fusion? Does the iPad feel smoother?
And this is all hardware encoding right?
Scrubbing quickly through this specific 8-bit 79 Mbps HEVC Sony Nature Camp 4K 59.94 fps clip on the 2017 iMac Core i5 is very jumpy in QuickTime (Mojave). It is essentially a fast slide show.
However, it's much. much worse on the iPad Pro 10.5 in LumaFusion. Unless I scrub very, very slowly, the shown image never changes, until I stop moving in the timeline. This is quite disappointing.
I guess this particular clip is very hard for these machines to deal with for whatever reason. Note also that LumaFusion also sometimes gave me a message saying there may be some incompatibilities with this file. However, it plays back just fine, in real-time.
I'd link the 8-bit clip so you could test it yourself, but I can't find it anymore. However, I get the same scrubbing performance result with the 10-bit version of the file, if you want to test it out yourself.
https://4kmedia.org/sony-camping-in-nature-4k-demo/
The problem with the 10-bit file is that I can't really use it for Mac benchmarking purposes. If I load it in QuickTime and then try to re-export it in HEVC, it appears to try to encode it in 10-bit again, which takes forever because that would be a software encode (for which the MacBook is terrible). The MacBook was telling it was going to take hours to encode that 2 minute clip. However, if load in the 8-bit clip, it will encode in minutes, so that would be a hardware encode.