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gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
rendering a 4k footage from Insta360 One x2 to MP4 (4k h264,h265) on the m1 max using Insta360 Studio 2021, the GPU of which has always been half used (below 50% GPU).

and the RTX3050 on a Windows laptop beats m1 max every single time, either in Insta360 Studio or in Premiere Pro...

anybody can explain?

1637356290557.png

Thanks
 
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lcubed

macrumors 6502a
Nov 19, 2020
540
326
at first glance, insta360 studio doesn’t even support apple silicon according to their requirements faq.
 
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gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
at first glance, insta360 studio doesn’t even support apple silicon according to their requirements faq.
Thanks, it actually does, the latest version supports arm, the process does say "Apple"
 

Realityck

macrumors G4
Nov 9, 2015
11,423
17,216
Silicon Valley, CA
is this anything to do with this example?

Linus Tech Time commented in a YouTube video at 7:18 on Hardware Encoding (Handbrake) in regards to Apple Video toolbox has some issues with the new media engine right now.
 
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gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
is this anything to do with this example?

Linus Tech Time commented in a YouTube video at 7:18 on Hardware Encoding (Handbrake) in regards to Apple Video toolbox has some issues with the new media engine right now.
emmm... might be the case, I guess people have to wait until Apple gets it right... should have picked up the Pro instead, so I don't feel this bad... RTX3050 lappy only is only half price of this "beast"... and beats it even on battery... what?! yeah, that's right... Thanks
 

Realityck

macrumors G4
Nov 9, 2015
11,423
17,216
Silicon Valley, CA
emmm... might be the case, I guess people have to wait until Apple gets it right... should have picked up the Pro instead, so I don't feel this bad... RTX3050 lappy only is only half price of this "beast"... and beats it even on battery... what?! yeah, that's right... Thanks
Considering the MBP software baseline is 12.0 on issue, and 12.1 is still beta 3 (available as a public beta) you might give Apple a feedback assistant message concerning the rendering or encoding issue you observed. :)
 

Analog Kid

macrumors G3
Mar 4, 2003
9,360
12,603
rendering a 4k footage from Insta360 One x2 to MP4 (4k h264,h265) on the m1 max using Insta360 Studio 2021, the GPU of which has always been half used (below 50% GPU).

and the RTX3050 on a Windows laptop beats m1 max every single time, either in Insta360 Studio or in Premiere Pro...

anybody can explain?

View attachment 1914245
Thanks
I thought the max had like 4 hardware blocks dedicated to video encoding. Is this because most of the heavy lifting is being done by other parts of the chip?
 

gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
I thought the max had like 4 hardware blocks dedicated to video encoding. Is this because most of the heavy lifting is being done by other parts of the chip?
I thought that too, it should then be even faster, with them being dedicated hardware (encoding/decoding), shouldn't it?
 

gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
just talked to Apple support, who asks me to boot into safe mode and try, I am like, dude, this m1 max is only 6 days old, with only PR and Insta360 installed... and this behaviours started off from the very first use...
 

gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
Considering the MBP software baseline is 12.0 on issue, and 12.1 is still beta 3 (available as a public beta) you might give Apple a feedback assistant message concerning the rendering or encoding issue you observed. :)
makes sense, Thanks
 

Analog Kid

macrumors G3
Mar 4, 2003
9,360
12,603
I thought that too, it should then be even faster, with them being dedicated hardware (encoding/decoding), shouldn't it?
I'd have thought, but I have no idea how much software optimization is necessary to make them sing. I expect that everything is going to continue to improve relative to these early benchmarks as software keeps being tuned to the hardware.
just talked to Apple support, who asks me to boot into safe mode and try, I am like, dude, this m1 max is only 6 days old, with only PR and Insta360 installed... and this behaviours started off from the very first use...
? It's always standard debugging practice to eliminate as many variables as possible... For every story we have about support asking us if it's plugged in, they have a dozen stories about users who forgot to plug it in...
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
just talked to Apple support, who asks me to boot into safe mode and try, I am like, dude, this m1 max is only 6 days old, with only PR and Insta360 installed... and this behaviours started off from the very first use...
I’m pretty sure that a tech support call to Apple on why a particular piece of third-party software isn’t using all of your GPU cores isn’t going to get very far. Not unless you are very patient and willing to answer many inane questions as you escalate up the support chain. You’d be better off contacting the developers of the software.
 
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lcubed

macrumors 6502a
Nov 19, 2020
540
326
might want to ask the insta360 support when they'll have an optimized version that fully takes advantage of the m1 max chip.
 
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iamMacPerson

macrumors 68040
Jun 12, 2011
3,488
1,927
AZ/10.0.1.1
Final Cut has been having the same problem. In fact the timeline performance was worse than my 3yo Intel MacBook. There appears to be a bug with all M1s as my Mac mini is suffering from the same issue. What I did to help performance was rewrap the footage from .mp4 to .mov and while it’s still not using 100% it’s buttery smooth. Render times also greatly improved but exports to .mp4 are still about 20% slower than the Intel machines. I assume that’s a bug, I reported it to Apple and am awaiting a response.
 

gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
Final Cut has been having the same problem. In fact the timeline performance was worse than my 3yo Intel MacBook. There appears to be a bug with all M1s as my Mac mini is suffering from the same issue. What I did to help performance was rewrap the footage from .mp4 to .mov and while it’s still not using 100% it’s buttery smooth. Render times also greatly improved but exports to .mp4 are still about 20% slower than the Intel machines. I assume that’s a bug, I reported it to Apple and am awaiting a response.
Cool thanks, will give it a go
 

ader42

macrumors 6502
Jun 30, 2012
436
390
I thought the max had like 4 hardware blocks dedicated to video encoding. Is this because most of the heavy lifting is being done by other parts of the chip?

thought that too, it should then be even faster, with them being dedicated hardware (encoding/decoding), shouldn't it?

The hardware blocks are for ProRes, you’re not using ProRes?

I found this discussion here which seems to indicate you may not have enough RAM and that GPU isn’t really used too much in Premiere for the process you are doing…

 

gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
The hardware blocks are for ProRes, you’re not using ProRes?

I found this discussion here which seems to indicate you may not have enough RAM and that GPU isn’t really used too much in Premiere for the process you are doing…

M1 max memory is under used, I would expect the GPU at least spiking up even a bit before it reaches the max and no longer copes, but it ain't the case by the look of it, as the GPU on m1 never wants to go beyond 50% if you look at the usage... like it's capped
 

crazy dave

macrumors 65816
Sep 9, 2010
1,453
1,229
The hardware blocks are for ProRes, you’re not using ProRes?

I found this discussion here which seems to indicate you may not have enough RAM and that GPU isn’t really used too much in Premiere for the process you are doing…


The media engine is not just for ProRes. The blocks also have hardware encoding/decoding for h.264 and h.265. Hence the odd results in the video @Realityck posted.

is this anything to do with this example?

Linus Tech Time commented in a YouTube video at 7:18 on Hardware Encoding (Handbrake) in regards to Apple Video toolbox has some issues with the new media engine right now.
There is no bug.

It would appear that there is something wrong with media engines and software interaction. I'll post with the actual timestamp built in:


I don't know that's what's causing the OP's issues, but it does seem to be an odd problem.
 

gmasta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
9
1
The hardware blocks are for ProRes, you’re not using ProRes?

I found this discussion here which seems to indicate you may not have enough RAM and that GPU isn’t really used too much in Premiere for the process you are doing…

I am using 264 and 265 by the way, thought the hardware for these 2 as well

from Apple https://support.apple.com/kb/SP858?locale=en_AU

where it does say

  • Media engine
    • Hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW
    • Video decode engine
    • Video encode engine
    • ProRes encode and decode engine
 
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