Macbook M1 for RED 5K Video Editing + Plugins?

[Kenneth Hansen]

Hey guys. Do any of you use the Macbook Pro 13" M1 for video editing? I personally use the RED Gemini 5K and edit in Premier and After Effects. I do a lot of VFX with multiple layers and plugins like RED Giant and BorisFX Sapphire.

I edit on my windows desktop which is a beast, but i would like a portable setup and i prefer Mac when it comes to laptops. I currently have a 2015 15" Macbook Pro which can't handle it. I use the laptop when traveling, when writing emails and scripts, and i don't like the bulky windows computers like the Razer Blade series. They are just too bulky for me and can't keep battery for too long.

I'm currently considering the 13" M1, or maybe i'm going to wait for the 16" M1. But could the 16" even handle the footage and plugins? Premier is a very badly coded program, so i don't know if the M1 would even help.

Do any of you guys use the Macbook Pro M1 for editing RED footage and using these plugins? Or any experience at all with the M1 for this purpose, like the Mac Mini?

Thank you

 

[Alex Lubensky]

Nope, don't expect it to run at decent speed you're used to on a PC. 13" M1 = MacBook 15 2019 in optimized Apps. Also, you can run into support issues with various plug-ins.

I'm not trying to say that's a bad laptop, I think it's one of the best options out there at the moment. The thing is laptop is a laptop, you trade some for the portability.

 

[Mike P.]

Ironically, on a 4k timeline in resolve, a maxed out M1 can playback 12k BRAW at full-res debayer and full playback proxy... But the same system struggled with 6k 8:1 r3d (had to knock it down to 1/2 good and 1/2 res playback on a *1080p* timeline).

I'd be hesitant for VFX because you can only get 16gb RAM max. Also if the software isn't native for AS it has to get emulated, so I think the performance will be comparatively awful. I don't know if Adobe have released AS versions of their software, and even if they did, they're likely still beta. The 17.1b8 of resolve did crash more than normal (twice in the hour I was messing around with it).

All of that said, regardless of the source footage, it rendered to h265 faster than any other computer I have used and the fan never turned on.