Is FCP expected to run like this?

3 weeks ago (no doubt as a feeling of guilt) my wife implored me to buy something for myself . . . so I sent off for a base model M2 Mac mini, as you do.

Though faster than my 27” iMac I wasn’t overly impressed and set about running it from an old Samsung T5 SSD on which I installed Ventura. Unfortunately it refused to boot from the T5 so I erased it and reinstalled the OS only to find it still wouldn’t boot. So I gave up on the machine, assuming it was yet another waste of cash and returned to my iMac.

Fast forward to Friday (2 days ago) when I was idly surfing YouTube. I came across a video that showed me where I had been going wrong .  .  .  I had been installing Ventura on the “Physical Volume” of the T5 instead of the “Physical Disk”.

Within the hour I had the mini running on the Samsung T5 connected by USB-C and performed a number of benchmark tests to see what a performance hit I could expect, as subjectively it felt as responsive as the internal drive.

The GeekBench scores over several tests between the internal 256 GB and the 1 TB T5 were identical and the Samsung exported the Bruce X test in 75% of the time the internal took.

An effect laden 11 minute 1080p project did take longer . . . 4% but I can live with that as it is still blazingly fast.

I assumed that longer projects would start to bring the T5 powered mini to its knees so this morning I tested out a 30+ minute 1080p project. 

Exporting the project as ProRes 422 took 2m 40s and produced a 25.53 GB .mov file.

Another test exporting as “Computer - faster encoding” produced a 4.53 GB .mp4 file in 4m 42s

These speeds are beyond my wildest dreams for a Mac running on an external SSD . . . are they normal?

The screenshot shows the project, which for me is reasonably complex.