dude, where's my media engine?

just got my M1 Max MBP (64G/4TB) set up and decided to do some side by side Final Cut tests with my previous MBP (Late 2013 2.6 Ghz 16GB/1TB + 750M) and got some surprising results:

3-minute timeline, using stills with ken burns effect and titles, ProRes 422 timeline format

Timeline render: slight edge to the M1 but just barely basically finished within seconds of each other

ProRes 4444 Export: tie

h.264 export: old mac is 10% faster :/

HEVC export: new mac is 6 times faster :)

i don't think there's anything wrong software-wise (fresh mac, rebuilt home folder) or hardware-wise (geekbench scores normal). if anyone knows what's going on here would greatly appreciate the knowledge. :)

Posted on Nov 20, 2021 2:28 PM

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7 replies

Nov 21, 2021 11:25 PM in response to ubernaut

I take it that you used the export file, Video and Audio, and chose H264, right? I would still expect that to be faster on the new mac. It would be interesting to compare the results of export file, computer, faster between the two macs.

ubernaut Author

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Nov 21, 2021 4:18 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

so i did an ingest test today h.264 (2:29 1080) to 422 new mac is 6 times faster for that (8 seconds versus 42) so i guess it's working for ingest just not export (at least from 422 to h.264)

ubernaut Author

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Nov 22, 2021 7:47 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

yeah i also tried export to devices which allows you to specify faster encode versus higher quality didn't seem to matter at all old mac was consistently 10% faster (the new seemed to start a bit faster but the old one would catch up pretty quickly).

ubernaut Author

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Jan 10, 2022 5:21 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

just had a chance to check this again under monterey 12.1 seems there has been some improvement but still not what i would expect to see timeline render now seems about 15% faster on the new mac and h.264 export is now tied, ProRes 422 to 422 HQ export seems maybe 10% faster on the new mac.

Nov 20, 2021 3:02 PM in response to ubernaut

What version of FCP do you have?

ubernaut Author

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Nov 20, 2021 3:03 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

latest 10.6.1 on both

Nov 20, 2021 3:06 PM in response to ubernaut

That is indeed unexpected…

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dude, where's my media engine?