Running Premiere Pro on Macbook Air M1 chip

[fredrikl90147610]

Will Premiere Pro run on the new Macbook Air with M1 chip?

[RjL190365]

Right now, that computer is not officially supported for Premiere Pro. The big reason is macOS 11 (Big Sur). There are still teething issues with regards to running Premiere Pro on any Mac that's running Big Sur at the moment.

However, someone posted a few results on the Puget Systems' PugetBench database with the new M1-powered MacBook Air, both with 8 GB and with 16 GB of RAM, and the results look promising. It was about as powerful (fast) as a 3- to 4-year-old Windows desktop PC with average enthusiast components of its vintage. With overall Standard-preset scores in the lower half of the 300s (versus the mid-700s that a properly configured current-gen 8-core/16-thread Windows desktop PC can achieve), it's still no match for a decent current-gen desktop or laptop with a decent discrete GPU. And the M1 chip's integrated GPU performed (as reported in its GPU score) about equal to that of a typical 4-year-old GeForce GTX 1060 in GPGPU processing (this means GPU-accelerated video rendering). However, the new MacBook Air is about three times faster than its immediate Intel-powered predecessor, which had been bogged down by its outdated integrated Intel Iris Plus graphics.

[RjL190365]

In addition, there are two submodels of the MacBook Air. One with a "7-core" GPU, the other with an "8-core" GPU. As one can guess, the 7-core model is slightly less powerful than the 8-core model. Both models, however, are significantly more powerful (video editing performance wise) than the Intel-powered MacBook Airs that they directly replaced.

[Kevin-Monahan]

I have the MacBook Pro on M1. I like it a lot, but it is only a test machine for now. To me, I think it runs pretty well, but others on YouTube seem to be having some trouble with performance. So far, I'm only seeing goodness, so I don't share that opinion.

Keep an eye on the beta versions of Premiere is my best advice for now.

Thanks,
Kevin

[John T Smith]

Read about Adobe's compatibility with the M1 CPU and the workaround
https://community.adobe.com/t5/download-install/can-i-run-my-adobe-apps-on-apple-computers-that-use-...

[RjL190365]

I gave in a week after my 57th birthday this past March, a purchased a base-model MacBook Air for myself.

I like it so far, knowing that my videos are all 1080p thus far. The problem is that the external SSDs that I have used with it (USB 3.2 Gen 2 x1) had significantly lower sustained non-Turbo write speeds than the maximum advertised sequential write speed: Whereas the advertised write speed was 1000 MB/s, the actual large-transfer sustained write speed turned out to be only about 650 to 700 MB/s. That's typical for a consumer external SSD these days seeing that most of them are based on or use a lower-end PCI-e NVMe SSD to begin with. One would need to spend a lot more money for an external SSD that can sequentially write faster than 1 GB/s for very large file transfers.

I ran the PugetBench for Premiere Pro (the latest version) with the latest version of Premiere Pro, and got practially equal scores with the external SSD and with the stock internal 256 GB SSD. When I ran PugetBench using a 7200 RPM external portable HDD, the PugetBench scores dropped slightly - from an average of about 385 with an SSD to 353 with the HDD. What's worse with the HDD is that it took excruciatingly long to import the 8k files compared to with an SSD.

[RjL190365]

Now with Premiere Pro 24 and the newest version of PugetBench for Creators (which so far includes the Photoshop and the Premiere Pro benchmarks), I was pleasantly surprised at just how well this M1 base-configuration MacBook Air fared against entry-level Windows laptops (with the absolute newest-gen CPUs, to boot albeit only integrated graphics) at a price point that's similar to this over-three-year-old MacBook. It's not so much that the MacBook performed well as that the newest integrated-graphics-only Windows laptops performed surprisingly poorly in these benchmarks.

[Warren Heaton]

Premiere Pro runs well on the Apple Silicon based MacBook Air laptops (even the first generation and now older M1), but I would only use it for light  or occastional video editing.  For heavy editing or daily editing, I'd go with a MacBook Pro:  M1 if the budget is limted, but I'd try to get at least an M1 Pro.  When it comes to picking between an M3 Max. M3 Pro, M2 Max, M2 Pro, M1 Max, or M1 Pro, I'd go by what best fits your budget.

[RjL190365]

Warren,

Keep in mind that starting with the M3 chip generation, there is now no more 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar as that model used the same chassis as the last two generations of 13-inch Intel MacBook Pros. Its place has been taken over by a new entry-level configuration of the current 14-inch MacBook Pro with the plain M3 chip.

[Warren Heaton]

Yes; however, the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro is available refurbished and used.  I have the 16GB/512GB M1 13-inch MacBook Pro as my email/Slack machine from work and it handles Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects fairly well and makes an excellent budget option.  It's also amazingly compact, being not much larger than my 2015 11-inch MacBook Air.  It's main drawback:  Two Thunderbolt/USB-S ports.  Of course, if render time is important (when is it not), go for a M1 Pro, M1 Max, M2, M2 Pro, M2 Max, M3, M3 Pro or M3 Max - whatever fits the budget.

Most importnatly, I'd pick a Pro over an Air.