Help: M4 MAX 36gb RAM model "not enough" for Resolve?

Hi all,

I am upgrading my 14" M2 max 32gb laptop for a 16" M4, and was just about to seal the deal by ordering the binned M4 Max with 36GB ram. But then I came across the recommendation that each GPU core should have 1.2-2GB ram to match it. Holy smokes! That would mean that the M4 Max binned chip is a poor choice for DR. Can this be true?

But: I wonder if the kind of work I do will actually see a difference. Although I edit 4k, it is fairly straightforward. I don't do heavy effects, don't use Fusion, and will almost exclusively cut and color in DR. Would 36GB still be problematic? In fact, most of the more involved edits will be done in Final Cut. It is mostly cutting and coloring that I want to do in DR.

Final Cut would absolutely blaze through this stuff with 36GB ram on an M4 MAX, and I assumed DR would too, but perhaps I don't understand the requirements of DR.

My use case: my use of DR is just starting as an adjunct to Final Cut. I would like to learn as much as I can, but I am primarily looking to do my color grading and make use of the speed editor to search and cut clips from the long seminars I edit. I know that many people round trip their edited timeline to DR for coloring and then export, but my eccentric workflow lets me start my project in FCP with trimmed, colored clips thanks to DR.

I love the capacity DR has to export clips with handles and grading, so I don't have to hold onto multiple 100gb camera files from seminars where only 20gb is useful stuff. I can save all the relevant sections, delete the dead space, and free up storage. Final Cut does not offer this.

Thanks for your help!

You should be fine if Fusion and heavy FX, temporal ones in particular, don’t play an important role in your work. Occasional swapping will not kill your internal SSD right away, but it’ll slow such things down.
If you are concerned about this, I’d consider a Mac mini, where the SSD can be replaced by now. Might be an expensive spare part by Apple only, but not the whole Motherboard.
An alternative is booting from a fast external SSD, which can be replaced for less.

You should be fine if Fusion and heavy FX, temporal ones in particular, don’t play an important role in your work. Occasional swapping will not kill your internal SSD right away, but it’ll slow such things down.
If you are concerned about this, I’d consider a Mac mini, where the SSD can be replaced by now. Might be an expensive spare part by Apple only, but not the whole Motherboard.
An alternative is booting from a fast external SSD, which can be replaced for less.

Thanks Uli.

I am not concerned with swap hurting my drive, but I am concerned with being bogged down. I was surprised that 36gb might be a problem for cutting and coloring, because all this could be done in FCP even with 16gb.

So if I read you correctly, a muliticam timeline with two angles of 24fps 4k 10bit slog3 files for the purpose of cutting, colorgrading, and then exporting (no heavy effects beside titling, no fusion, no noise reduction) will work fine with 36gb RAM and 32 GPU cores?

Something astonishing to me is that there are now only two configs of the M4 chip that meet these 2gb per GPU core criteria:
1. the M4 Pro chip with 20cores/48gb RAM (sadly doesn't have the dual encoding engines of the Max chip)
2. the M4 MAX with 40 cores /128gb RAM which is nearly $5000.
For the MAX chip, you can only do 64 (apparently insufficient, under 2gb per core), or 128.

If multi-cam of H.264/H.265 footage matters a lot for you, the Max might be the better choice. And then, 1.5 GB per core should be enough for most purposes. I'd probably go for 64 GB with those 40 cores too.
See your other thread too.

I am not concerned with swap hurting my drive, but I am concerned with being bogged down. I was surprised that 36gb might be a problem for cutting and coloring, because all this could be done in FCP even with 16gb.

The problem is the H.264 compression: first you have to decode the file, then add all the processing possible within Resolve (including color, sharpening/defocus, power windows, keys, secondaries, noise reduction, and so on), and then re-encode the file to whatever format you need to deliver. If you eliminate the need to playback H.264, that solves a lot of issues: ProRes is infinitely easier to play back. We've been saying for awhile that 32GB is probably the minimum system RAM you'd want to get if you have anything complicated -- like 4K material.

How does your system rate with the Blackmagic Speed Test app? Try that and see what it says about formats and frame rates and so on. The MacBook Pro M4 Max is generally considered an excellent machine.

It's very difficult to draw a line where you may need more than 1.2 or 1.5 GB per core.
According to our extensive testing, you can live quite well with that if you stick to UHD sources in a UHD timeline (or UHD final render) and don't use several demanding functions like NR, DepthMap, Speed Warp etc. stacked or for more than one clip in multi-cam.
As soon as you have sources in higher resolutions, like 6K or more, you'll run into the limits much sooner. And then, the codec matters for sure. HEVC needs very little due to the hardware units in Apple silicon, but Canon 8K RAW (in an UHD timeline) will eat 8-10 GB just to play, 6K OCN-ST up to 9.
BRAW in 6K is very efficient and needs less than 6 GB to play,

And then, Fusion is quite a different beast.

The problem is the H.264 compression: first you have to decode the file, then add all the processing possible within Resolve (including color, sharpening/defocus, power windows, keys, secondaries, noise reduction, and so on), and then re-encode the file to whatever format you need to deliver. If you eliminate the need to playback H.264, that solves a lot of issues

You have been saying this for years and it certainly used to be true. But nowadays with hardware-accelerated decoders this is objectively a non-issue. Especially on Apple Silicon since (unlike in the PC world) it has hardware acceleration for all variants of subsampling for H.264/H.265.

To be very clear, this is hardware that is separate from the CPU/GPU, it has virtually no impact on the CPU load. Today any modern Mac will decode H.264 at the rate of several hundred frames per second without breaking a sweat.

I am not concerned with swap hurting my drive, but I am concerned with being bogged down. I was surprised that 36gb might be a problem for cutting and coloring, because all this could be done in FCP even with 16gb.

The problem is the H.264 compression: first you have to decode the file, then add all the processing possible within Resolve (including color, sharpening/defocus, power windows, keys, secondaries, noise reduction, and so on), and then re-encode the file to whatever format you need to deliver. If you eliminate the need to playback H.264, that solves a lot of issues: ProRes is infinitely easier to play back. We've been saying for awhile that 32GB is probably the minimum system RAM you'd want to get if you have anything complicated -- like 4K material.

How does your system rate with the Blackmagic Speed Test app? Try that and see what it says about formats and frame rates and so on. The MacBook Pro M4 Max is generally considered an excellent machine.

First of all thanks to all for the helpful replies.

My current system, which is slower than either of the systems I am looking to replace it with, in the "will it work" section gives it a greenlight all the way up 8k DCI 60 for H.264. It will handle 12k Prores up to 60, but not H.264.
I will only be using 4k.

Question: if I optimize media to prores, does that solve some part of the issue? Would 36gb / 32 cores become less of an issue?

Right now, the problem is that one model, the Pro chip, uses 48gb for 20 gpu cores. It's faster variant, the MAX (cheaper version) uses 36gb for 32 cores. But it is astonishingly powerful in every regard when tested. But it offers (1.12gb per core).

This has me stumped. The most expensive MAX chip is simply too expensive for me, so it is one of these two.

It doesn't matter, since the Max has hardware for both H.264/265 and ProRes. These units use their own space obviously, since in my tests playing H.264 is using far less RAM than codecs that are decoded by CPU and GPU, like Sony OCN, Red R3D and all the rest.
So, if you work with original H.264/265 or with ProRes, the load on the RAM will be low. I think in your use case more RAM would be a question of "future proofing" (if that exists at all with computers). So, if there will be no 6K or 8K camera or massive multi-cam on your plan, but you need the maximum speed for final renders, the Max would be the better option. Only you can decide between these criteria.
If you ever need motion graphics, but not heavy VFX, you could replace Fusion with Apple's Motion for only 50 bucks. It's fast and not RAM-hungy.

Regarding Marc's remarks, I'd say that de- or encoding on Apple silicon is a non-issue. BUT mp4 clips don't always have correct timecode, which can cause all kinds of problems with re-linking, Media Management, or moving projects to other systems. IMHO, mp4 will work flawlessly on modern Macs, as long as it has proper timecode. If you can't be sure of that by carefully testing your sources, transcoding to ProRes is still the safer option.

Again Uli thank you for all your help.

I ended up ordering the M4Pro chip with 20cores and 48gb memory. I figured that while I am new to Resolve I just want to get going and not even think about ram. This machine will handle Final Cut pro like Zeus. We'll see about Resolve!

I already have an M2 Max, so I can use it to batch export on a short turnaround as needed. I am sure the M5 MAX will have all kinds of bells and whistles, and if it is enticing, I'll swap the M4 when the time comes.

The lower cost of this new machine allowed me to splurge on 4tb SSD, something I have wanted for a long time. From what I have been reading, the overall performance will be indistinguishable from the MAX chip for everything except exporting and rendering. But that won't matter so much.

I think you'll be impressed with that laptop.
And it can be quite convenient to have a separate machine for rendering, since DR is blocked while doing that.

I'm joining the discussion to ask for an opinion. I do mostly editing and a little compositing. I use mostly Davinci Resolve (and a little After Effects and Avid Media Composer). I'm undecided between:

- Mac studio M4 max Base model with 36 GB RAM
- Mac studio M2 max with 64 GB RAM (I found a new one for the same price as the M4 max)

I don't know whether to favor the RAM or the power of the newer processor.
What do you think? Thanks

I’d say you are better off with the M4, but it depends on what you’re doing in AE until now and if you want to avoid Adobe altogether.
If it’s usually Motion Graphics, you can avoid Fusion and use Apple’s Motion, it’s simple and fast.
For complex compositing, a Mac in Fusion is not the best option anyway.

I’d say you are better off with the M4, but it depends on what you’re doing in AE until now and if you want to avoid Adobe altogether.
If it’s usually Motion Graphics, you can avoid Fusion and use Apple’s Motion, it’s simple and fast.
For complex compositing, a Mac in Fusion is not the best option anyway.

Compositing is secondary and never intense. I am mostly interested in editing (and being able to work with effects like Relighting or Depth Map). In other forums I have read that RAM could be a bottleneck with 6k or 8k resolutions.
I also thought it was good to have a 2:1 ratio between RAM and GPU core.

Yes, for such effects and a timeline in 8K you should have enough RAM.
2GB per GPU core are a safe rule of thumb.

So maybe the Mac Studio M2 max with 64GB and 3the best choice for me... What do you think?

IMHO, yes. I prefer stability over speed.

You have been saying this for years and it certainly used to be true. But nowadays with hardware-accelerated decoders this is objectively a non-issue. Especially on Apple Silicon since (unlike in the PC world) it has hardware acceleration for all variants of subsampling for H.264/H.265.

All of the computers I own are Apple Silicon, and H.264 and H.265 is still a drag. And the lack of accurate embedded timecode is also a huge pain in the ass. Long-GOP formats are just not made for post.

I concede that there are very high-quality intraframe codecs that don't have these problems and will work a lot better. Some cameras using HEVC can do this pretty well. But what I'm talking about is a GoPro or most smartphone videos, which are going to be laborious to process on a 36GB Mac. Throw tons of hardware at it, and it can work very effectively.

Smartphone video is an issue, yes, as it almost always has a variable frame rate. I suppose my only objection is about blanket statements that aren't always true. H.264 and H.265 doesn't have an issue with timecode, there's only an issue when they're stored in the MP4 container. H.264/H.265 in QuickTime or MXF has perfect timecode as it's a separate data stream in the container and isn't related at all to the video codec. With H.264/H.265 video in a QuickTime container, timecode works exactly the same as ProRes in QuickTime.

Second that.
Even MP4 can get re-wrapped into a better container with TC added.