Video Transcoding M1 Max vs M2 vs M4

[Lee_Mac]

Bit of a slow Sunday so I thought I'd have a comparison between my current Macs and post the results showing the differences between the chips over time. This is nothing but observations other than anything. I do have an old 2017 i3 Mac mini but it was struggling just to load the project us in Resolve never mind do any sort of processing and final output!

Transcoding in Resolve is one of the heaviest tasking jobs you can throw at any computer. Transcoding footage shot in Cinema DNG to ProRes 422HQ is something I do all day long in my day job filming with drones and ground cameras in TV and Film productions. The test project I used was a collection of cDNG shots filmed in 6k which was 259gig on total, transcoded to UHD within Resolve with the final output in Sony slog3 with the final videos file being 96gig. The project was rendered to the local drive off the same external SSD drive to keep things consistent.

M1 Max MBP with 32gig of RAM. 5 minutes and 30 seconds. FYI this project on my previous maxed out i7 Mac would have taken around 30 mins! The M1 Max changed how I worked massively when in the field.

M2 Mac Mini base model with 8gig of RAM. 9 Minutes and 24 seconds.

M4 Mac Mini with 24gig of RAM. 8 minutes and 9 seconds.

 

[Bigwaff]

M1 Max has two Media Engines. M2/M4 Mac mini have one Media Engine.

 

[Lee_Mac]

M1 Max has two Media Engines. M2/M4 Mac mini have one Media Engine.

Yes lol

 

[TzunamiOSX]

M1 Max has two Media Engines. M2/M4 Mac mini have one Media Engine.

Sure? I thought that only the Ultra has all Engines two times, because there are two Max chips connected.

I would say the difference is the bus speed or the drive speed. How fast are the drives of each Mac?

Edit, you were right:
There's a Media Engine included in the ‌M1‌ Max that's designed to accelerate video processing without heavily impacting battery life. The ‌M1‌ Max has the fastest video encoding and is 2x faster than the ‌M1 Pro‌, plus it has two ProRes accelerators.

 

[EugW]

Sure? I thought that only the Ultra has all Engines two times, because there are two Max chips connected.

I would say the difference is the bus speed or the drive speed. How fast are the drives of each Mac?

Edit, you were right:
There's a Media Engine included in the ‌M1‌ Max that's designed to accelerate video processing without heavily impacting battery life. The ‌M1‌ Max has the fastest video encoding and is 2x faster than the ‌M1 Pro‌, plus it has two ProRes accelerators.

Mx Ultra has 4 media encoders.

 

[Lee_Mac]

Mx Ultra has 4 media encoders.

It’s a M1 Max MBP not the ultra chip.

Sure? I thought that only the Ultra has all Engines two times, because there are two Max chips connected.

I would say the difference is the bus speed or the drive speed. How fast are the drives of each Mac?

Edit, you were right:
There's a Media Engine included in the ‌M1‌ Max that's designed to accelerate video processing without heavily impacting battery life. The ‌M1‌ Max has the fastest video encoding and is 2x faster than the ‌M1 Pro‌, plus it has two ProRes accelerators.

I’d have to check the drive speeds but I think the write speeds should be greater than the transcoded data rate. Although having said that I’m not if Resolve will be doing any sort of chaching when transcoding the files. I’ll copy and paste the final rendered file and see how long they each take, should answer part of the question.

 

[EugW]

It’s a M1 Max MBP not the ultra chip.

I was responding to the other poster who was talking about the Ultra.