[OP] Does Davinci Resolve really work on an Apple M1 Mac Book Air?

[@christianhotter]

Nice! That's exactly what I wanted to do when I get an M1 machine for my daughter. Now I don't need to steal her machine since you did the tests I wanted to do. :)

[@akeebkhandoker7754]

Finally some truth. I own a Macbook pro M1 and it's ideal for average people and light video editors. I don't see myself using it professionally either.

[@hangar4pro]

Thank you for making a real world test scenario! Synthetic benchmarks rather bore me these days. Certainly enough of them out there on the M1. Question is, any reason why you didn't tick "use render cache" in export settings? You would have found that the same export would have been cut literally in half . I use it all the time as I don't have a beast of a machine either. Just a tip if you didn't know. Thanks again.

[@AtillaLifeson]

You are absolutely right about everything. The M1 Macs are indeed powerful for what they are but to "complete" a professional workflow they indeed fall behind. I mean what are people expecting? They are still a big leap in performance for the money and size, no question. I personally see the Mac Mini M1 as the only machine suitable to real professional "money earning" worflows. Like doing some transcoding or assembling on it while the main machine is occupied with rendering and such. Loved your video! Thanks for your time you put in!

[@Bluesguitarwork]

i just had macbook pro m1 16gb i am an hobbiest but still having issues in Davinci resolve , do you beleive Mac mini m1 is better performer ? ( i old old mini) thanks

[@AtillaLifeson]

@@Bluesguitarwork Too much variables to make any kind of suggestion. Like what are you editing of? Whats the filetypes you are using? Are you running anything else in the background? etc. etc.

[@barkingwolfvideos]

Good video mate - THE TRUTH

[@creatrhub]

Thank you. I was asking the same questions.

[@jhhd44]

You should update this video with the new Davinci M1 support

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

To clarify, the version that I am using in the video is the M1 ARM build. ;-)

[@jhhd44]

@@RightBrainedTutorials I just mean the new version of Resolve the update that came out in March that fully supports M1 Macs

[@biswajit07]

yeah, the davinci 17

[@ff4444]

This is really useful!

[@MarbenP]

Thanks man! Keep it up

[@franksemi_modular]

I can't understand why it is not running smoothly in your timelime, but maybe cuz you are using red files. Some people are saying that DR is mostly optimized to work best with blackmagic BRAW. DR17 is also still in beta and a few chrashes is expected. I still get crashes on my DR 16 studio as well on my "old" mac book pro. Anyway I recently bought the Mac Mini M1 16 gb version, and with BRAW 4K I must say it is running smooth in 4k timelime even with 60 fps in highest quality. Scrubing through timelime preforms quite well too depending on how long the timeline is. It is like a factor 10+ compared with my two years mac book pro with highest spec. Applying de-noise, filmgrains etc. those things will make it unusable in timeline even with proxy for sure. But always disable those effects while working with it. Render/Export time is not impressive for now but I didnt expect anything gamechanging there. I just wanted the M1 cuz it dosnt get overheat and performs great in GUI. It does render twice as fast than my mac book pro so im positive surprised. I will properly set up a linux box for rendering at some point for those heavy things. I'm definitely not a mac fanboy, and I swore that I would never get at mac again after buying my outrageous expencive macbook pro that was my biggest mistake in hardware purging. But i'm more than positive surprised by the Mac Mini M1. I think that the extremely awesome thing about these M1's that even you are exporting video with DR you can still run programs like photoshop, preimere and do what ever. I made a test where I had a 6 min video clip exporting in 4K highest proress 4444 qx quality and maximum de-noise and effects etc in DR. Something I would never normally do and it dosnt make any sense to do execpt for testing. An 24 hour export haha thats how much heavy effects was on. And I set the M1 to loop 18 different 4k videos at the same time and a longer handbrake encoding. Plus various programs was open. Surfing and working on other things still goes blazing fast at the same time cuz of the dedicated resources for OS and gui. The render run finished after 24 hours with everything running at same time. And not once I could feel the M1 getting warm. The fan was running but I had to listen extra to even hear it running. On my old macbook pro it said it would take over 2 days for the same render, but I stoped it cuz it didnt make any sence to render it fully and its just a waste of power. Normally I have to skip doing anything else while rendering, and in summer I even had to put a big fan on the computer to prevent it from overheating and shutting down. So for my simple and limited use with video I think the M1 is great, but for audio hardware it is basically still useless cuz almost none of the hardware manufactures have made drivers that works natively with it yet.

[@thr6453]

Thanks for giving an honest opinion sir!! I am looking for a good machine. I can extend my budget upto mac mini m1 (it is little bit costly in India). Can you please tell me is it fully worth it to buy mac mini m1 and is there any other setup I can make which is equivalent to that price? I will be using DR only on that and will be using Sony A7siii files on it !!

[@nelsonje9635]

I think DaVinci Resolve can be used on M1 MacBook but by noon professionals who do not need to process lots of heavy files.

[@rgarciap7]

Thanks for sharing the truth.

[@splendour78]

Hey, thanks for the video and the tutorials they are all great . I am considering to buy a MacBook M1 but can not be sure of because I am using mostly Houdini. Do you have any thoughts about that ?

[@18bovende]

PLEASE make the video on Houdini on Apple M1.

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

It works but it's not great at the moment. Supposedly an ARM version of Houdini is in the works, and who knows, maybe it will be announced next week at the WWDC?

[@18bovende]

@@RightBrainedTutorials That the version of Houdini will be announced at the event? That would be great. If there is also a new Mac Mini this will be my first useable Houdini machine. I’ve been learning with small scale stuff on my old MacBook, but hopefully I can scale a bit with this Mac Mini.

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

@@18bovende Just for the record, Houdini does work on the M1, but I think some functions are not fully 100% with the ARM processor. I am speculating that perhaps they will announce something at WWDC next week, but I'm not sure as nobody really knows. Houdini 19 must be in beta by now, so I'm h oping some sort of announcement is imminent.

[@18bovende]

@@RightBrainedTutorials Allright. Since there was no new hardware announcement this yesterday I think I’ll buy the 16gb Mac Mini. Would you think it is the best computer for Houdini and Resolve/Fusion you’ll get for under 1300 euro’s?

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

@@18bovende I would consider holding off a bit longer if you can due to some rumored new Mac mini M2 coming out in the late Summer/early Fall. However, at the moment I do think the Mac Mini M1 is an excellent bang for the buck, especially considering the numerous sales that are happening on Amazon and other places.

[@Trylobit]

I wonder if Macbook Pro or Mac Mini would be able to finish the 4K export. It's interesting how most reviews say that the fan is insignificant, but in the case of long rendering it might be crucial. Are you planning on doing a tutorial on you grading workflow?

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

Honestly I suspect a bug with the Resolve 17.1 beta 5. I reported it to Blackmagic and we'll see if they can replicate on their end. I am thinking of doing more Resolve tutorials in the future if there is enough interest. Thank you.

[@paoloricaldone6273]

Useful thanks

[@RustedFaith]

Very helpful video, will you be able to run tests on 4k @ 30fps / 60fps (h.264 footage from DJI / GoPro cameras) tracks on M1, will appreciate, thanks

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

I don't have access to those files, but if you can point me toward where I might be able to find some footage from those cameras I'll test it out.

[@SRC598]

Hey I am a total hobbyist video editor. I’m just using GoPro 9 4K footage on a baseline M1 MacBook Air. Will the 8GB model be ok with DaVinci Resolve?

[@midphase]

What CODEC does the GoPro use? H.264 is notoriously more challenging, but if Apple has implemented some H.264/H.265 decoding optimization, then it should be ok. The 8Gb vs. 16Gb jury is still out. If you can post a link to some footage I can test it out and see how it does.

[@SRC598]

@@midphase It uses H.265 I believe

[@ProducoesVP]

Hey, i was thinking about buying a M1 Macbook Air 16Gb just to use as a laptop editing videos in Davinci Resolve on the fly (just like a secondary machine)...just edit 4UHD H.264 8bit 422 MP4 Files (XAVC-S from Sony) and export to UHD MP4 KZbin Setting just using 2 or 3 Color Grade Nodes...nothing of special effects or transitions...just overlays (client logos etc), does this can handle for that cenario ? Could you please give me a feedback once you have a M1 Macbook...? In youtube, i only found youtubers that only uses 1 track of video and doen't use any color grading or overlay (normally KZbinrs doesn't use logo on their videos...i don't know why...so i can pick up any youtuber video and use them and nobody knows because it hasn't any channel logo just like TV for example).

[@Yash-oj6ni]

I'll be editing just 1080p footage with basic effects, transition and colour grading would the base model get it through?

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

I think you'll be fine for what you need. The main effects that really are very CPU-heavy are the noise-reduction ones.

[@thrillcat]

Have you run any tests on the Air now that they’ve released an official M1 native version of Resolve?

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

As far as I know Resolve for ARM is still in beta.

[@franksemi_modular]

The apple silicon M1 native version is still in beta. I tested both DR 16 studio in rosetta2 and the native 17 on my M1 and the native runs much faster with the gui / timeline experience, only rendertime dosnt seam to be diffent witch is strange. That makes be think that it is still not fully optimiszed for M1 yet. But some of it must be, cuz It renders twice as fast as my two year old macbook pro. I noticed if you have a DR 16 studio key you can registrate the native 17 beta with the same studio key. I dont know it there is any difference from the normal free beta in terms of features by doing that.

[@Rahulpal-zh3zi]

Hello sir can you make render passes tutorial in Houdini how to make render passes and save process pls sir ❤️🔥 love form India🔥🔥

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

I'll test them out, I'm actually waiting on some possible updates to both Houdini and 3Delight to see if they get on board the M1 train!

[@MatthewChenDirector]

Interesting. But with this kind of extreme stress test, those differences between 8gb ram and 16gm ram, or 7 cores and 8 ... that's when those things begin to make a difference. I'm not sure who told you that the 7 to 8 cores won't make a difference, but if it's some kid at an Apple store I'm sure they aren't thinking you will be doing this kind of edit. In some other videos on KZbin they show that the 8 to 16 ram is almost identical in performance until you really push it hard, then it makes a huge difference. So I'm not sure what is the breaking point before it makes a huge difference but this test would have been a lot better if you spec'ed it out. And the reason is because if someone is going to try and use these M1 Macs as a main editing station, they would spec it out at least.

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

Not exactly sure what your point is to be honest.

[@MatthewChenDirector]

@@RightBrainedTutorials you're testing the hardware using the most demanding situations while using the least powerful version of that hardware. When anyone editing something that demanding with it would for sure have a more spec'ed out version.

[@MatthewChenDirector]

Not saying it's not a valuable test, just saying it's something worth noting.

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

@@MatthewChenDirector By that logic, I shouldn't be using an M1 machine at all. There is obviously interest and demand to run pro apps on these machines. Would an 8-core GPU make a teeny tiny slight difference in the performance of something like Resolve Noise Reduction nodes or smart resizing? Maybe. Is that teeny tiny improvement in performance worth paying an extra $300 for? I really don't think so. If you are looking for a better performing, more professional machine -- I would say either stick with an old generation i9 Intel Mac Book Pro 16", or wait for the rumored M1x machines which will be announced later this year.

[@MatthewChenDirector]

@@RightBrainedTutorials I understand, but I am addressing that "teeny tiny slight" difference you mention. That is an assumption, not something you tested. And since this entire video is a test, it's worth noting is all. Like I mentioned, others who have tested the 8gb ram vs the 16gb ram, often they find a teeny tiny difference, or no difference ... UNTIL they push it the hardest. And then in some scenarios there was a big difference. Thus, I'm simply questioning whether the kind of tests you're doing, both the extra core and extra ram would, in this specific situation, make a lot more than a tiny difference. I don't know, but I think it's a valid question.

[@felipefelipecarvalho]

Qual versão ?

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

17.1

[@khana6992]

The C C sound you make when you use the characters S and C. I find it really pinching my ears, upgrade your recording equipment.

[@RightBrainedTutorials]

Sure thing. You buy me a new mic and I'll make sure to use it!

[@khana6992]

​@@RightBrainedTutorials Sure thing sire! Will do.