Blackmagic Forum

Is anyone using an M3 Pro, if so how's it going?

I can only tell you about the M1 Pro.
AFAIK, the only issues reported here in the context of DR were with the M3 Max.

Uli Plank wrote:I can only tell you about the M1 Pro.
AFAIK, the only issues reported here in the context of DR were with the M3 Max.

Wtf? You keep doing this. Why are you answering to these posts when you're on m1? Also why are you saying that only m3 max has reported issues? Ffs.

ClaytonMoore wrote:Is anyone using an M3 Pro, if so how's it going?

Im on m3 pro, it's absolute ****. Seems to be hardware decode-thing. Devs know about this, but not sure if they're working on a fix or not.

Unchecking "Decode H.264/H.265 using hardware acceleration" seems to solve the issue. But that defeats the purpose of buying the m3 pro. So doesnt really solve anything.

Here's a screen capture showing the main issue I have while editing. Lots of clips showing up as offline even if they're not.


But another thing, and perhaps more important is, you cant render anything out, it keeps crashing on different places in the timeline.

Thank you for the kind words and for adding this very important observation.

Well, and sorry for this, Clayton, I know enough about the M2 to dare and comment again, since in another thread you were asking about Macs in general without getting an answer until now.

We used a fully stuffed M2 Max Studio for three months and it didn't show such an issue. And then, my colleague sitting right next to me is using a MacBook Pro M2 Max without such a problem (but with too little RAM at 32 GB).

So, until that issue is getting sorted out, it might be better to get an M2 if it's urgent. There are still attractive refurb offers by Apple.

Uli Plank wrote:Thank you for the kind words and for adding this very important observation.

Well, and sorry for this, I know enough about the M2 to dare and comment again. We used a fully stuffed M2 Max Studio for three months and it didn't show such an issue. And then, my colleague sitting right next to me is using a MacBook Pro M2 Max without such a problem (but with too little RAM at 32 GB).
So, until that issue is getting sorted out, it might be better to get an M2 if it's urgent. There are still attractive refurb offers by Apple.

I dont want to be mean, but this just doesnt help at all. It's, meaningless, and does nothing for us. Are you commenting just to get your post counter up?

Like, we already know the m-chips, all of them are fantastic. Zero people are asking that question and we're not interested in how much ram they have either.. We have a very specific problem, with the m3 pro specifically. Its like we're asking how to peel a banana, and you telling us that your apple doesnt need peeling. Like wtf

@Patrick
"I dont want to be mean, but this just doesnt help at all. It's, meaningless, and does nothing for us. Are you commenting just to get your post counter up?"

I don't understand it, why so aggressive? Uli is a member who has already helped a lot of people!
In my opinion, he doesn't need the click count at all.
The forum is there to help and inform everyone.
Without self-interest.

dirk-pel wrote:@Patrick
"I dont want to be mean, but this just doesnt help at all. It's, meaningless, and does nothing for us. Are you commenting just to get your post counter up?"

I don't understand it, why so aggressive? Uli is a member who has already helped a lot of people!
In my opinion, he doesn't need the click count at all.
The forum is there to help and inform everyone.
Without self-interest.

Sure, but at some point intentions don't matter anymore. There's "helpful" and then there's just mud in the water. Let's not make it worse

Agreed, just let it rest, until Clayton is telling us exactly what he already knows and what he wants to know.
I was too lazy to react to all three threads, like this viewtopic.php?f=21&t=196936

ClaytonMoore wrote:Is anyone using an M3 Pro, if so how's it going?

No, I'm not using the M3 chipset

Its certain that an issues that are designed to work but don't will get fixed. Its not tenable that an advertised feature does not work.

I was originally considering a Mac Studio M2 Max, but I use a portable for work. Im not in a hurry as it going to be this year sometime. I'm here to start the process of gathering information, I'm open to ANY comments to start. Thats why I'm here.

Well, compared to a PC desktop, the Studio Max is quite portable.
If you want our review of the M2 Max, here it is (including some notes on laptops:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/c79wzx87 ... awtst&dl=0
(Use DeepL for translation)

Hi

At the risk of being shouted out in this thread, I have the M3 Max MacBook and I am not having any issues within Resolve that affect my workflow.

My colleague has the M3 Pro MacBook and they have not reported any issue around H.264/H.265 Encode / Decode as reported in this thread.

I only switched over to MacOS a few months ago so I have not done many projects on it yet, but so far I have been very happy with performance and battery life.

Peter

If everybody would have the issue, it may have been fixed already. Nothing is harder to fix than a bug that the developers can't reproduce.
It may be limited to footage out of Sony hybrids. What are your sources?
Just trying to get to the bottom of this.

P.S. I always risk to be shouted out, I don't care. Fortunately, it's rare in these forums, so I'm still around.

Uli Plank wrote:If everybody would have the issue, it may have been fixed already. Nothing is harder to fix than a bug that the developers can't reproduce.
It may be limited to footage out of Sony hybrids. What are your sources?
Just trying to get to the bottom of this.

P.S. I always risk to be shouted out, I don't care. Fortunately, it's rare in these forums, so I'm still around.

Its not all h264. For example lumix gh5 footage is totally fine, I have many terabytes and there's no issue browsing through. But gh6 footage is acting up. If you just put a few clips in, maybe you dont see it. But if you browse through 100+ clips, you'll notice about half of them will randomly look like they're offline. You can keep editing, because if you hover over the clips, they're there, but when you try to render out your timeline, it will fail.

If the developers cant reproduce this, they should get back to us and at least say that. Because I can go and buy a second m3 pro, put an sd card in with the media, download resolve and browse the sd card through media page. There it is. "Offline media". I know this because i've done it. And no, it's not just these clips, from this particular shoot. I can open up older projects that where shot with gh6 and was edited fine with the m1 chip, and they will have the "media offline" now on the m3 pro. It's not an sd card thing either, because same issue occurs if media is on the internal or another external drive

So, could you check if there's any difference in technical details between the gh5 and the gh6 shots?
You could use a tool like MediaInfo (free) or Invisor (even better, with side-by-side display).

MediaInfo also has side-by-side display to compare two media files... sorry for off-topic post.

Uli Plank wrote:So, could you check if there's any difference in technical details between the gh5 and the gh6 shots?
You could use a tool like MediaInfo (free) or Invisor (even better, with side-by-side display).

Gh6 is the .mov file
No idea how to make just one scrolling screenshot on mac. Exporting a .txt from mediainfo was not very useful either. But here goes:

GH6 files are 10bit for almost all choices. GH5 was 8 bit unless out of HDMI. Most CPU's will decode 8bit h264 but struggle with 10 bit files especially h265. One of the reasons I got the Studio Max as my PC struggles with GH6 files. I shoot 5.7K Vlog 60P on my GH6. Maybe, for some reason, the hardware decode for the M3 is not working or not used.

SkierEvans wrote:GH6 files are 10bit for almost all choices. GH5 was 8 bit unless out of HDMI. Most CPU's will decode 8bit h264 but struggle with 10 bit files especially h265. One of the reasons I got the Studio Max as my PC struggles with GH6 files. I shoot 5.7K Vlog 60P on my GH6. Maybe, for some reason, the hardware decode for the M3 is not working or not used.

Yeah, maybe.. its all a bit odd. The GH5 actually has 10 bit all intra flavors too but you need a v90 card, which I dont have. Anyway, GH6 files have worked with 0 issues even on m1 base chip, so I feel like it really should just work here too.

Yes, I forgot about the All Intra as I recorded to my Ninja V on my GH5 and GH5S. To me it seems the hardware decode is not working either on the specific M3 you have or it has been switched off somehow. I am really still a PC guy just use the Studio Max so no idea how to test whether the hardware decoder is working or how to switch it off or on.

The GH6 footage seems to be in 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, which is a bit exotic and might have some issues with some hardware.

SkierEvans wrote:Yes, I forgot about the All Intra as I recorded to my Ninja V on my GH5 and GH5S. To me it seems the hardware decode is not working either on the specific M3 you have or it has been switched off somehow. I am really still a PC guy just use the Studio Max so no idea how to test whether the hardware decoder is working or how to switch it off or on.

Let's just hope one of the BM devs comments on this soon. Like, is this a Resolve thing or an Apple thing?

Tero Ahlfors wrote:The GH6 footage seems to be in 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, which is a bit exotic and might have some issues with some hardware.

Yes, the GH6 does produce difficult files to play but my Studio Max M1 has no problem with 5.7K 60P h265 4:2:0 or 4K 4:2:2. So I think there is some issue.

4:2:2 is becoming more and more of a standard for higher level hybrid cameras, it's not really exotic any more and is running flawlessly on M1 and M2. The Sony A7IV or the A7SIII record such files too and Apple is decoding 4:2:2 in 10 bit by hardware from M1 on. I'd be utterly surprised if Apple dropped that support in the M3.
It would be interesting to test some Sony files on the same machine.

Tero Ahlfors wrote:The GH6 footage seems to be in 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, which is a bit exotic and might have some issues with some hardware.

Sure, but again, why only an issue with the m3 pro? Not the base or max or even the earlier m1, m2?

If it's worth anything:

If you have a clip you can post a link to, I can check it out on my M3 Max. I've had no issues in Resolve with it, though (but I'm not seeing GHx clips in my flow).

I can't say that I see anything in the "specs" mentioned, such as h.264/265, 10bit, 422... and so on that should pose any problem at all for any M3 gen chip.

AndreeMarkefors wrote:If it's worth anything:

If you have a clip you can post a link to, I can check it out on my M3 Max. I've had no issues in Resolve with it, though (but I'm not seeing GHx clips in my flow).

I can't say that I see anything in the "specs" mentioned, such as h.264/265, 10bit, 422... and so on that should pose any problem at all for any M3 gen chip.

I dont think the max has this issue. But absolutely, you can have a look. Here's a Google Drive link with some clips https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... h2CZzr8O9v
Sometimes you need more clips for it to happen. Its so random which clips gets "offline media" so if you're only browsing through 10 clips, they may all look alright because of luck. But if you open a folder with more clips you'll see it. Maybe you can just duplicate the clips a few times. But again, I dont think there's been reports from m3 max users having this issue.

Patrick Abde wrote:

Uli Plank wrote:I can only tell you about the M1 Pro.
AFAIK, the only issues reported here in the context of DR were with the M3 Max.

Wtf? You keep doing this. Why are you answering to these posts when you're on m1? Also why are you saying that only m3 max has reported issues? Ffs.

ClaytonMoore wrote:Is anyone using an M3 Pro, if so how's it going?

Im on m3 pro, it's absolute ****. Seems to be hardware decode-thing. Devs know about this, but not sure if they're working on a fix or not.

Unchecking "Decode H.264/H.265 using hardware acceleration" seems to solve the issue. But that defeats the purpose of buying the m3 pro. So doesnt really solve anything.

Here's a screen capture showing the main issue I have while editing. Lots of clips showing up as offline even if they're not.

But another thing, and perhaps more important is, you cant render anything out, it keeps crashing on different places in the timeline.

hey, do you still have these issues on the m3 pro?

SkierEvans wrote:GH6 files are 10bit for almost all choices. GH5 was 8 bit unless out of HDMI. Most CPU's will decode 8bit h264 but struggle with 10 bit files especially h265. One of the reasons I got the Studio Max as my PC struggles with GH6 files. I shoot 5.7K Vlog 60P on my GH6. Maybe, for some reason, the hardware decode for the M3 is not working or not used.

The GH5 records 10-bit 422 in H.264 in Long-GOP and All-I internally. Not sure about 10 bit H.265 as I don’t have my camera to hand, but it’s definitely not limited to 8-bit recording.

Patrick Abde wrote:

SkierEvans wrote:GH6 files are 10bit for almost all choices. GH5 was 8 bit unless out of HDMI. Most CPU's will decode 8bit h264 but struggle with 10 bit files especially h265. One of the reasons I got the Studio Max as my PC struggles with GH6 files. I shoot 5.7K Vlog 60P on my GH6. Maybe, for some reason, the hardware decode for the M3 is not working or not used.

Yeah, maybe.. its all a bit odd. The GH5 actually has 10 bit all intra flavors too but you need a v90 card, which I dont have. Anyway, GH6 files have worked with 0 issues even on m1 base chip, so I feel like it really should just work here too.

You can record 10-bit 422 (H.264) on a V30 SD card without issue - I do this all the time (at 24 & 30 fps). It drops down to 8 bit 420 at 60fps, but also records fine on a V30 card. Bear in mind it’s only 150Mbps for Long-GOP, so doesn’t require super fast storage. The 400Mbps All-I codec does need to the V90 SD card, but I couldn’t see much of a difference for most footage when viewed on a 1080p monitor. If you have a lot of movement such as water or fire, then there is a slight improvement with All-I but it’s minimal .

I work with BRAW only, so far no problems whatsoever.

From all the messages I've seen, this is related to GOP codecs.

Uli Plank wrote:From all the messages I've seen, this is related to GOP codecs.

I’m planning to buy Dji mini 4 pro, would I face any problem with its d-log M?

M3 Max here.

It absolutely screams, have not had any issues.

That said, I wouldn't, as I work with audio not video, and typically just get a reference video track to edit and mix to.

If someone would like me to test a few things out, happy to oblige.


Thor

PeterDrage wrote:I have the M3 Max MacBook and I am not having any issues within Resolve that affect my workflow.

My colleague has the M3 Pro MacBook and they have not reported any issue around H.264/H.265 Encode / Decode as reported in this thread.
Peter

What OS are you on now?
Had a macbook pro m2 16gb and Davinci resolve 19, 19.01 had tons of issues with my 1080p h.264 footage, with proxies or not, all settings matching correctly (like playback monitor vis-a-vis the footage 23.976fps).

I'm having issues on both PP & DR with playback and color scope. I read that M2/M3 might not be that great with the integrated GPU? or rather maybe Apple hasn't done a good job addressing the performance?

I didn't have issues with the macbook pro m2 16gb on Sonoma 14.3 on a separate different laptop. Just this one. Have a return label from Apple and thinking of upgrading to the Macbook pro m3 18gb 14-core GPU, 18-core GPU but it might not solve anything and googling macbook pro m3 and bugs/issues Premiere Pro & Davinci Resolve in google, I read a bunch of different issues from different users