Resolve ultra slow on M1

Hi,

our media school wants to buy a Mac Mini M1 for video editing. We already have a MacBook Air M1 and tested Resolve 17.3.2 there. I know, it is not the fastest machine, it has only 8 GB RAM but Sony FS7 footage and ARRI ProRes and ARRI RAW is incredibly slow. It runs with only one frame per second or less. Even just dragging the footage from the media pool into the timeline takes at least 15 seconds.

Is that normal? Would be a Mac Mini with the same processor but 16 GB RAM as fast as expected? I cannot believe that the M1 shall be that slow. The same footage runs well on an old Intel MacBook Air from 2015.

Thank you
Steffen

[Peter Chamberlain]

Moved to Resolve forum

There is something not correct as ProRes easily runs realtime.
What res are the files?
Is the timeline frame rate the same as the clips frame rate?

The FS7 footage is only FullHD, the ARRI footage 4K. As I wrote, it runs well in Resolve on an old Intel MacBook Air but not on an M1 MacBook Air. Unfortunately, I have no other M1 computer available for testing. I would do it in the store but they don‘t allow it.

I completely wiped Resolve from the M1 and reinstalled it. The problem stays the same.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Post a link to samples and someone can check

If you can provide sample footage, I can check on an M1. ProRes should be no problem.

Update: We always played the footage from a connected USB3 hard drive, because the Mac Mini we want to buy is going to be connected to bigger external drives as well. The testing machine MacBook Air only has USB-C and it turned out that the adapter (USB3 to USB-C) seems to be a bottleneck. We copied (in fast speed though) the footage to the internal drive and the Air could play 4K ARRI RAW with several grading notes without any problems. I knew that something must be wrong because Apple advertises Resolve on their machines. I am sorry that I made a fuss here. Thank you!