As you are aware the export (share) progress bar works its way up to 95% and then stops. There is a further wait depending on the length of the video before a QT version of the film pops up.
Why doesn't the progress bar go all the way up to 100%?
This question is directly connected with this one . . .
Strange export times when booting from iM… - Apple Community
iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 12.6
OK, I've found a little clarification.
For some reason when the export is set to open the movie in QT Player on completion, the progress bar stops recording at 95%.
If you set it to simply "Save" the progress bar goes up to 100%.
That's the way it is but I still don't know why it has been programmed that way?
Regarding the anomaly of the QT Movie taking much longer to appear when the iMac is booted from an external USB 3.0 SSD, I have got some further info though not an answer.
I have just tested the time taken to export a 4 minute 4K project on the iMac normally and the iMac booted from the external.
I tested each twice as no 2 exports of the same project will take exactly the same time and there were 2 or 3 seconds differences here or there.
However, the result was a dead heat with the best iMac and external taking 3m 22s
I find it incredible that when booting from a slow USB 3.0 SSD I get identical performances.
Can anyone explain why?
Would it be the same if I did the same test with a new M2 Mac? . . . . I doubt it but I think the performance would still be quite impressive.
As Tom said, an M2 will be very much faster than your current machine, and my tests go in that direction: the processor matters a lot more for export than the drive.
An M2 with a USB3 HD will handily beat even your iMac with an SSD, because the time to read and write is small compared with the time needed to process the frames in the CPU.
Say I tried my tests on the M1 Max with a USB3 HD (which I was about to try, except I could not readily put my hands on one), instead of the very fast internal storage. At most it may add a second or so, but let's go with 2. That would still handily beat the MBP 13-24...
New computer Luis?
My 2019 MBP did BruceX in 21.47.
My 2021 M1 Max MBP did it in 9.1.
This was export to H.264.
Ok, I will take you up on this :-)
I am sitting at my trusty 2019 MBP, but I also have access to an M1 Max Mac Studio.
I will do a short test with a 4K timeline and will report back.
I fully expect that M1 Max to trounce the MBP on this, just as it did in the famous BruceX benchmark, but we'll see.
Here are the results of my quick test:
36 second project in 4K (3840x2160), with two green screen clips, some background clips, and the Keyer effect applied.
Export File, Video and Audio, H264
Done three times on each machine.
2019 16" MBP: average 24 seconds (manually timed, three attempts)
M1 Max Mac Studio: average 11 seconds (manually timed, three attempts)
This was done with a copy of the same library, exact same project and settings, with the media saved to each Mac's internal drive.
I don't see the point of the test Luis.
Obviously the Mac Studio will be way ahead.
My comments were about booting a given machine from an external SSD . . . in my case connected by USB 3.0
I suspect that if I booted an M2 with my SSD I would only get the same performance that I am now getting from my iMac or would the M2 bestow an improvement on my external SSD?
Absolutely not. Not for export. As Luis said the read/write time is minimal compared to the processing time. The M2 would do the processing part much faster than your current machine. That would our tests are showing, how much faster the processing time is on the new systems.
Thanks for the input from both of you.
Let me get this straight. A basic M2 is around 3 times faster than my current iMac according to all the bench tests and practical tests I have seen on YouTube etc.
Are you saying that even booted from a USB 3.0 SSD the M2 would perform at pretty nearly its optimum speed when editing and exporting?
Obviously when transferring large files the USB boot would be much slower but apart from then, what other activities would show a deterioration in performance?
All these questions are directed at stopping RAM swap on the internal drive of an M2 as the cheap external would be taking the brunt of the wear . . . or so I have been told.
"All these questions are directed at stopping RAM swap on the internal drive of an M2 as the cheap external would be taking the brunt of the wear . . . or so I have been told."
You were told wrong.
There is no reason to fear the internal drive "wearing out".
I think you may have misunderstood what I have written.
An M2 with 8GB RAM will be using Virtual Memory quite a lot when doing intensive processing. This VM will eventually risk degrading the SSD as there are a finite number of read/write cycles.
By booting from a comparatively cheap external drive, that drive will take the wear and tear caused by the VM.
Is that correct or not?
I am also quite sure that my comparatively light use will not seriously affect the life of the internal SSD but I am thinking of a worse case scenario where the computer has heavy daily use . . . someone I know may be doing that.
I don't think that I misunderstood.
My point is that the fears of swapping resulting in a premature wear of the internal drive are greatly exaggerated. FUD, I'd say.
Rather than severely reducing performance due to a misplaced fear, just enjoy your mac like Apple made it to be used.
If your M2 mac is a laptop, for sure the battery will give out long before the SSD does.
My daughter still uses a 2013 Retina MBP and the original SSD, despite being used every day for 10 years, is working just fine. My wife still uses my old 2014 Retina MBP, and same thing. Their batteries had to be replaced, the sound is funky, but otherwise these macs are still great.
That said: I do NOT advise anyone getting an M2 with a meager 8GB of RAM, unless the machine is only destined to a lowly web and e-mail use; especially not for stuff like video editing.
Note that this RAM is going to do the role that all the RAM and also the VRAM do in a machine like my 2019 MBP. And my 2019 mac one has 16GB of RAM plus 4GB of RAM.
Get your mac with 16GB of RAM at least; also, avoid the smallest size of drive if you can, as it is slower (it is not slow per se, but alas it is slower than their larger versions). That is my suggestion.
Yes, but this is one is not my editing machine. I get to use it at work, and could do these tests during lunch time :-)
I think the BruceX results were on the same ballpark as yours, for both macs.
For Ian’s purpose I guess BruceX wasn’t really a good test as there is no real data read/write as it’s all the built in components.
Why does the export progress bar only go to 95%?
