Bad performances on Apple Silicon chip - M1 Max, 32GB ram & 1TB SSD

[Jonathan N-GS]

[Issues are the same on both Premiere Pro & AE]

Good morning people,

2 days ago, I bought a M1 max MacBook Pro, 32GB ram and 1TB SSD, my previous MB was from 2016 and was starting to die, and doing creative tasks on it was not a pleasant experience.

However, even with the new MB, the experience is the same and maybe worse.

I have been looking online for the last two days and did the following steps:

• Uninstall/Reinstall
• Downgrade version
• Tried Beta
• Played with the app settings

But nothing seems to be working properly. 

Playback is really slow, even at 1/3 resolution, encoding time in Media Encoder is not great or even failing at times.

I am not even using 4k or 8k video files, for now I am not even using video files. I am just playing around with the apps. On premiere pro, I am trying to edit .mogrt simple text animations. On after effect I just goof around using built-in effects, and images. Really nothing fancy.

I am panicking as I bet on this machine to increase my work quality and make the whole creative process smoother. 
I am not per se a digital artist, but actually a fullstack developer, however, I want to standout in the current market I am in (West Africa) and offer state-of-the-art services by blending art and technology.. 

So dear community, which kind of info should I provide, for you to help me make this creative process smoother. 

Or is the M1 max an already outdated laptop?

Best regards,

Jonathan

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jonathan,

Sorry. I didn't experience this performance issue at all. Can you try a video clip to see if your issue might be related to the .mogrt files you use?

Thanks,
Kevin

[Jonathan N-GS]

Hi Kevin,
I will try and let you know!

Hopefully you’re right!

Regards,

Jonathan N-GS,

[Kevin-Monahan]

Great. I have an M1 with only 16GB, and I am playing back 4K HEVC VFR from the iPhone like butter.

[Jonathan N-GS]

Hello Kevin, I tried playing 4k videos from the phone, and it works fine. HOWEVER, I just added the simple noise effect on the clip.. and OMG, at 1/2 resolution is slow and skipping. At full resolution, it is just not working. And again, that's only a simple 'noise' effect. 
I am perplexed...

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Jonathan,

You're right. I checked it on my footage. Noise is not a GPU-accelerated effect, so it might be stressing the computer if you add it to HEVC or H.264 footage. My suggestion is to render a preview of the effect. I hope that works.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Jonathan N-GS]

Is there a list of effects that are GPU-accelerated? The only one I saw was for Premiere Elements. 
Also, is it strange that a 'beast' like the MB M1 Pro cannot handle a simple noise effect? I would understand if it was some heavy 3D modelling or a big/heavy project with tons of effects and stuff. But to be honest, I feel that I was once again fooled by Apple's marketing around the Silicon Chips.
I will open another thread on the AE community, I am facing some issues as well with rendering a simple 15 seconds clip.. 
I am far from being ready to deliver 'state-of-the-art' products to my customers with all those annoying issues.. 

Thank you Kevin for taking the time to answer us!

[Kevin-Monahan · Accepted solution]

Hi Jonathan,

Sorry for the continued problems with the performance of these effects that lack GPU acceleration.

You can see if the effect is accelerated in the Effects panel UI. Click the icon directly next to the search field.

I could editorialize on the pluses and minuses of the new ARM-based Macs, but I will save that for another post. 

I would explore transcoding your 4K files or using proxies to improve your system's performance when working with effects. You can do either of these things as the files are prepared in the background to get editing immediately. Once you work with editing codecs like ProRes or ProRes LT, you might experience better overall performance.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Jonathan N-GS]

Hey Kevin,
Please don't be sorry; you've been more than helpful!
It is time for me to learn more about AE, codecs, and proxies. I've been using Adobe since my childhood, but everything always seemed to be okay without having to do some black magic on it (joke, of course), but since it is for work and my client's expectations are pretty high, I need to improve my skills by learning more about the process of rendering etc. 

Thank you again, Kevin :sun:

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sure, no problem. I hope I can help. The old days it was easier because the media was more standardized, as was the hardware. Larger and more compressed 4K and 8K formats makes it more difficult. Computers are not keeping up with the camera tech, I'm afraid.

Kevin