MYTHOUGHTS FOR MAC 1.5 PORTABLE
MYTHOUGHTS FOR MAC 1.5 PRO

The figures are similar for encoding to HEVC. To put that into context, if you had a 90-minute feature film and needed to create a ProRes deliverable file, it could be done in a mere 48 minutes. 1 minute of screen time took 32 seconds in ProRes. The results were impressive, to say the least.

MYTHOUGHTS FOR MAC 1.5 PRO

In this test the MacBook Pro is decompressing from the ProRes HQ, adding the LUT and recompressing to ProRes HQ, and doing all of this from and back to the internal SSD drive. To make sure it was decompressing and recompressing, rather than just copying the file, I added a 3D LUT to the footage. To get an idea of how fast the 16” MBP can turn around a finished render, I created a 1-minute video with ProRes 422 HQ source material and rendered it back out to a ProRes 422 HQ Quicktime movie. Nobody likes waiting when the job is done. Every minute saved at this stage of the process is a big deal. They happen on every project at least once, but you will often be doing multiple exports over the course of larger projects. One area where there is always a welcome difference in a high powered machine is on export renders. This is one of the big pluses of FCPX as an editing system because it makes such effective use of any Mac’s hardware that it over-performs even on underpowered systems. Between the GPU accelerated effects and the very effective background rendering, it is not as easy as it used to be to quantify how much practical difference there is in FCPX because so much work happens in realtime, even on lower-powered machines. Rapidly rolling back and forth through the source or edit footage in 4K with the JKL keys is as fast and responsive as I would expect on a well-powered desktop Mac. In FCPX, 4K footage on a 4K timeline is buttery smooth. For pro apps that lean heavily on the GPU, such as DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro, having such a powerful GPU means that the 16” MacBook Pro is capable of a lot more actual work than other powerful laptops that don’t have as serious a GPU. For film and video professionals the RADEON GPU is one of the most significant things about this machine. The test unit I am using is a 2.4 GHz 8-Core i9 with 32 GB of RAM and a RADEON Pro 5500M GPU with 8 GB of Video RAM along with Intel’s onboard 630 GPU with 1.5 GB of Video RAM. This is a lot more MacBook Pro in only a slightly larger package. At first glance, it is very easy to get the units mixed up. It does have a slightly bigger footprint, it is slightly thicker and a tiny bit heavier. The first thing that strikes me about the new machine is how similar it looks and feels to the recent 15” MBP’s.

I’ve now been testing the 16” MacBook Pro in a wide variety of working scenarios over several months now and have a clearer idea of just what it actually means for filmmakers, on the go or in the studio.

MYTHOUGHTS FOR MAC 1.5 PORTABLE

When Apple released the new 16” MacBook Pro late last year it promised to fill a gap for creative professionals who needed to be doing high powered work but in a portable form factor.

Mythoughts for mac 1.5