M3 Pro vs M3 Max for Video-Editing

[Ambrosia7177]

@filmgirl and others,

So last week I went to my local Apple store, and got really lucky as there were like 8 employees and 4 customers, and I got this guy who has supposedly been there for like 14 years and he was really friendly.

He demo-ed a 14" MBP M3 Pro with 36GB of RAM, and a 16" MBP M3 Max with 64GB of RAM?

He also, at my request, downloaded Cinebench 2024 and ran it on each.

The M3 Max got a score of like 12,000 and the M3 Pro got a score of like 6,000.

However, as far as I could tell, both were really fast laptop.

More importantly, I could not hear either laptop running during the test - although I am hard-of-hearing and noisy public areas make it harder for me to hear.

But I would say both the 14" M3 Pro and the 16" M3 Max were silent.

I put my hand under each one after the test, and there was a warm spot, but nothing compared to when this 10 year old rMBP gets HOT!

So I was very pleased with the demo - the only missing piece is that I wish I knew how loud and hot a 14" M3 Max would be... :-/

I suspect that the 16" case helped to keep things cooler, and thus may be the reason it was quiet. (Maybe a 14" M3 max would be noisy while running Cinebench, but who knows?)

If I have time, next week I am going to go back and see if I can get the same guy, and see if I can install and edit some large video files I have shot from my iPhone and GoPro.

If the 14" M3 Pro doesn't choke on those, then I'd say I am golden...

 

[funwithstuff]

That is a very good - if not disappointing - point that you make.

Although, if you shoot RAW or ProRes and later on Hulu comes looking for you, or YouTube ups their game and starts providing higher-quality videos, then those who chose RAW or ProRes from the get-go will be better off.

In other words, shooting in RAW or ProRes might help to future-proof your work, right?

Yes, in theory if you shoot really nice footage then you're future proofing yourself, but... I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually gone back and re-used footage from old jobs. It did happen recently, where I was able to re-use some clips I shot for a client over several years, and they all looked good. But in most cases, footage should be fresh, simply because content needs to be current. It *is* a good idea to export a ProRes master of anything you do, though, especially if you're not going to keep all the original footage forever.

Some people do say that they upload ProRes to YouTube and can see a difference in the quality of their final output, but I've never been able to see it. YouTube doesn't treat everyone the same, though — more popular channels get special privileges — so we could both be right.

 

[Lorenzonio]

Hi!
I'll try to take your responses one at a time. Thank you for your patience.

>>Have to disagree on this. Um, I have nearly 2TB of day-to-day files on this 10-year-old MacBook Pro that I am typing on.

>>If my 2TB SSD is nearaly full now, I can't imagine buying a new MBP with anything less than a 4TB internal

To be perfectly honest, if I'm doing a small quick job which I know won't make demands on my pipeline, I confess I'll ingest the media to the system drive. But when I'm done, I wipe it off after archiving it to a client external.

>> Sounds like a HARSH warning...WHY do you say that?

Experience, going back a couple decades. I still remember little nightmares like using bus-powered Firewire external drives attached to my desktop machine, and in the middle of a Final Cut Pro edit session the timeline suddenly going white-- followed by my complexion-- as media went offline.

Then I learned about *powered* external drives, the kind you plug into the wall, or, ideally into a battery backup voltage protector (AKA "UPS box").

Then I learned about how not to stuff live media onto my system drive (desktop, or laptop, especially) which serves my apps and a zillion often invisible supporting files. Pro's simply don't recommend it. The system has to prioritize what comes first, and if there's a bottleneck between a media app and a media file using the same "chatty" pipeline, it's often the app first, because it serves the media! One of them may crash or corrupt. Off to the backup disk you go. You do.. have a complete backup of your media?

>>How can it be better to work off an external drive - that most certainly is not as fast as your internal SSD?

That is usually true, but speed isn't really the issue here. For perfect harmony, give the system drive its app space and the ability to grow new supporting files, autosaves, etc, and offload actual media-- video, music, photos used in a cut-- to an affordable media (AKA "scratch") disk. Most modern Thunderbolt 3-4 drives at 40 Gbps can easily accommodate 2-3 streams of 4K video, even from classic spinning hard drives, which is great for Multicam work, or multiple tracks of video and audio, elaborate timelines, and alleviates the demand on your system drive.

I usually edit in ProRes HD or HD(HQ) in standard HD or 4K. But the ProRes family offers lighter codecs to make access even faster, like ProRes LT or Proxy, which still give you a good image for editing, allowing you to "uprez" your final cut for export. You get complete frame for frame info you don't get from popular compressed codecs like H264.

That codec follows a "group of pictures" scheme going back to MPEG and AVI, where you don't actually have complete frames ("I-frames") in each clip, but groups of frames with only partial information, and it's processor intensive to turn this scheme into full-data editable frames. At high resolution, makes for a great camera codec, and also for delivery. Less of an issue these days, but folks like me use Avid DNX or Apple ProRes as editing/mastering codecs. And as another writer has said, you can then export your timeline to any delivery codec.

Another plus: when the project's done, you simply disconnect, label, and archive the external to a shelf. No need to upgrade your internal. (Do a Time Machine backup to the internal on occasion!)

I hope I've given the best answer why not to employ your system drive for media storage. I read that your system drive is now almost full. Your solution to buy a larger internal drive is not a good idea in dealing with high-resolution time-based media. It's time to modularize your system into the engine and the coal tender connected, yet safely separate.

Be sure to get other opinions!


Re: The Sony a7Siii...

>>Yeah, it seems like the best camera for my needs, but it soooo expensive, and it looks like the price just went up some more.

>>Just for the body and a decent lens you're looking at about $6,000 (minus sales tax).

Wow. I bought mine at B&H for $3500 a few years ago. I just checked their website. It's now selling the body for $3200.

I couldn't afford Sony glass, at $2K. I opted for Sigma, at $1K. Worked out just fine.

>> Then, yesterday, my fantasies of shooting in ProRes came to a grinding halt when I see an Atomos external monitor/storage is like another $1,000. Then if you add in extra SSD's and accessories, you are looking at an $8,000 - $10,000 rig!!

Your shopping list is correct, but not sure where you're getting your pricing from- are you overseas? Tariifs, maybe? At B&H, New York, which ships everywhere, the Atomos Ninja base unit goes for $600.00, and while the monitor is HD only, it'll record up to 6K/30 fps. That's the model I bought. I record ProRes HQ on it for my own insert shooting.

But regarding the SDD the Atomos uses: I purchased only one, a Samsung SSD, rather than Atomos' Angelfire SSD which doesn't stick out from the frame- big deal. The Samsung works a treat, and I archive the ProRes media to a standard hard drive so I can recycle the SSD forever.

>>I might just have to settle for getting a new iPhone 15 Pro Max and shooting ProRes on that, but I **really** want to have a real camera, with real manual settings, and a real "normal" lens.

Using iPhone-- not as crazy as it sounds! There is even a great iPhone app, Filmic Pro, to give you even more control over image than Apple provides. One of my clients shot a couple inserts with it after his main production RED camera shoot was complete. The inserts cut into the RED footage seamlessly, with very little massaging. Saved the day.

>>I have to work "remote" at my "remote" job, so a laptop is my only option. Plus when I travel, a laptp is een more necessary.

Perfectly understandable.

>>That relates to my response to your opening "salvo"!! ;-)

My gun is holstered. Hope this was helpful.

Best as always,
Loren

 

[Ambrosia7177]

@Lorenzonio,

When you respond and quote, you have to type outside of what you are quoting otherwise when people hit "Reply" nothing from your last message gets quoted and it's a real pain to response...

​

 

[Lorenzonio]

@Lorenzonio,

When you respond and quote, you have to type outside of what you are quoting otherwise when people hit "Reply" nothing from your last message gets quoted and it's a real pain to response...

​

Well, I did just that, dear, adding right-pointing brackets to your quotes. Best I could do to respond to the many points you raised! Sorry about that.

Best as always,
Loren

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Well, I did just that, dear, adding right-pointing brackets to your quotes. Best I could do to respond to the many points you raised! Sorry about that.

Best as always,
Loren

If you hit "Reply" and then go into someone's message to where you want to comment, and hit <return>, the system will break (the bubble) of the part you are quoting and then you can type your comments. Go back to the next part your are quoting, find the line you want to respond to, hit <return>, the system will brek the quote, so you can reply, and so on.

There is a way to fix your nested response, but I didn't have the time to fix it so I didn't respond.

Just saying.

 

[Preston78]

The Max will perform better in DaVinci Resolve and it's about the best config you can get for this work in a compact laptop. The fans will spin noisily regardless of size though you get a bit more performance with the 16". But for any less intense daily work the fans will remain off most if not all of the time. These chips are power efficient but plenty powerful so even though they remain cool in daily tasks they can produce a lot of heat when the performance is needed. Unless you want a less powerful laptop there is no way to avoid the fan noise. You can try limiting performance and thus heat and noise a bit with the low power mode in MacOS.

Unless you make your money with video editing the M3 Max will offer plenty of performance in the 14", I would not get the 16" as it's significantly less portable and there is no significant performance difference unless we are talking about longer render times where the chip will be at 100% load for a while. And you'll likely not want to use the Mac anyway when it's sitting maxed out for half an hour rendering away. g

The Max offers strong performance in DaVinci Resolve. Consider the 14" for portability; fan noise is inevitable under load. MacOS's low power mode helps manage heat. Choose based on your video editing needs and mobility.