M2 Ultra or M4 Max 4 best realtime playback w heavy timeline

I edit live events w as many as 16 different 4k60 streams. Many different camera makes and models are common too. I generally edit from ProRes proxies, then finish in the native files. The most important thing to me is playing back w/o dropped frames, lowering the preview quality, etc.

I’m wondering whether the M2 Ultra or M4 Max would work better for my workflow. My initial guess was the M2 Ultra considering it has twice the encoders and decoders as the Max. But, I also saw that the M4 Max is supposed to be capable of playback of 18 streams of ProRes 8k. This is surprising as it's up from 10 in the M3 Max and close to the M2 Ultra claim of 22 streams.

For quick reference, the other key specs are:

M2 Ultra Mac Studio 24 CPUs 60GPUs 64GB Ram $3600
Up to 22 Streams of 8k ProRes video playback

M4 Max Mac Studio 14 CPUs 32GPUs 36GB Ram $2000
Up to 18 Streams of 8k ProRes video playback

Thanks for any help!!

16 4k60 streams is very demanding. I have top-spec M1 Max MBP and M1 Ultra MBP. There's no question the M1 Ultra is smoother for large multicams. ProRes proxies helps a lot but if you apply many effects you want the best GPU possible in a Mac. When it comes to exporting that, the GPU and multiple media engines help.

For that class of project, I'd get a well-equipped M3 Ultra. It's expensive, but so would a similar workstation-class, professionally built Windows machine.

The two machines you listed present a dilemma. The M2 Ultra is better equipped but two generations old. The M4 Max has the new ARM CPU design, which is much higher single-core performance, and the GPU memory management was improved starting with the M3 series, so it has that.

I'm assuming this is for professional work. Don't skimp on the machine.

I have now tried to push my new Mac Studio M2 Ultra to its limits, I have not succeeded, I have made an attempt with 18 (eighteen) tracks of UHD-HDR-H265 50p PiP material.
All tracks ran smoothly without any stuttering.
I think the new Mac Studio M3 Ultra is even better, but I don't think it's worth it because you can't think that fast.
Maybe the rendering is a bit faster, but I'll leave it now. Because after M3 Ultra there will be an M4 M5 etc. later.

Dirk PEL

Thank you both for your responses and I'm sorry for my delay, but I never got notification of them for some reason. In the meantime, I ordered both an M2 Ultra and M4 Max Mac Studio. I'll run some tests to compare them, then return one of them.

In the meantime, I found an authorized dealer selling the base M3 Ultra for around $700 more than M2 Ultra. The main differences would be the M3 Ultra would have:

- 32GB more unified memory (unsure how much that matters to me b/c I use the Edit page 95% of the time when doing anything editing related)
- 4 more performance CPU cores
- Thunderbolt 5 (M2 has Thunderbolt 4)

Any thoughts on this? Thanks again for y'all's help!!

I edit live events w as many as 16 different 4k60 streams. Many different camera makes and models are common too. I generally edit from ProRes proxies, then finish in the native files. The most important thing to me is playing back w/o dropped frames, lowering the preview quality, etc.

I would wait until a 256GB M5 Ultra Mac Studio or Mac Pro is available. Use one of those, and it could conceivably do very well even with 60fps H.265 files.

BTW does it have to be 60fps? Could you tell the same story and shoot the same show with 30fps?

I edit live events w as many as 16 different 4k60 streams. Many different camera makes and models are common too. I generally edit from ProRes proxies, then finish in the native files. The most important thing to me is playing back w/o dropped frames, lowering the preview quality, etc.

I would wait until a 256GB M5 Ultra Mac Studio or Mac Pro is available. Use one of those, and it could conceivably do very well even with 60fps H.265 files.

BTW does it have to be 60fps? Could you tell the same story and shoot the same show with 30fps?

Thanks for this, but I'm confused what you mean by 256GB. Are you talking about memory, SSD capacity, or something else? I'm guessing something else b/c Mac Studio are currently available w up to 512 GB memory and of course 256gb SSD is very small.

And I'd love to wait until a M5 Ultra is available, but I have a 6-part series that I need to edit now and my M1 pro isn't cutting it (sorry for the pun).

About the 60p, as it's a live sporting event and the real slomo is a nice effect, we shoot that way. Again though, the footage is alreadyin the can.

...I'd love to wait until a M5 Ultra is available, but I have a 6-part series that I need to edit now and my M1 pro isn't cutting it (sorry for the pun)....

A top-spec M4 Max or an M3 Ultra would be vastly faster than your M1 Pro. You are already using 50% ProRes Proxies, so that is highly optimized. Knowing it is ProRes Proxies puts a different perspective on 16-camera editing. Video decode acceleration is much less an issue for ProRes. The M4 Max or M3 Ultra could also *generate* those proxies much faster.

Given you're coming from an M1 Pro, it's almost nitpicking to choose between an M4 Max or M3 Ultra; they are both so much faster than your current machine.

I would *not* get the M2 Ultra. It also would be better than your M1 Pro, but it's a generation behind the M3 Ultra, and lacks various performance improvements made to the M3 and M4 generations.

Often overlooked are the ANE (Apple Neural Engine) improvements. That is increasingly used for NLE functions but I don't have a current list.

A top-spec M4 Max or an M3 Ultra would be vastly faster than your M1 Pro. You are already using 50% ProRes Proxies, so that is highly optimized. Knowing it is ProRes Proxies puts a different perspective on 16-camera editing. Video decode acceleration is much less an issue for ProRes. The M4 Max or M3 Ultra could also *generate* those proxies much faster.

Given you're coming from an M1 Pro, it's almost nitpicking to choose between an M4 Max or M3 Ultra; they are both so much faster than your current machine.

I would *not* get the M2 Ultra. It also would be better than your M1 Pro, but it's a generation behind the M3 Ultra, and lacks various performance improvements made to the M3 and M4 generations.

Often overlooked are the ANE (Apple Neural Engine) improvements. That is increasingly used for NLE functions but I don't have a current list.

Thank you for that. Part of me hates to buy the M3 Ultra b/c I feel ripped off paying full price for a machine that is essentially a year old (b/c the M3 Ultra SHOULD have been released along w the rest of the M3 line and we SHOULD have the M4 Ultra now). But, it's stupid to allow feelings to get in the way of making a smart decision.

Thanks also for mentioning the Apple Neural Engine improvements. I admit, I really have no idea what this is and the search I just did didn't tell me much. I did find that for "AI specifications" (unsure what that really means) the U3 Ultra has 32 Neural cores @ 70 TOPS whereas the M2 Ultra has 32 Neural cores @ 31.6 TOPS. Can you elaborate or point me in the right direction to learn more?

Thanks for this, but I'm confused what you mean by 256GB. Are you talking about memory, SSD capacity, or something else?

System RAM.

About the 60p, as it's a live sporting event and the real slomo is a nice effect, we shoot that way. Again though, the footage is alreadyin the can.

Good luck with that. That will be a challenge. 2 or 3 streams might work; 16? I tend to doubt it.

Below is a 64-layer timeline edited in 2014 in FCPX on a "trash can" Mac Pro. The original timeline showed 64 separate concurrent layers at certain points. This was possible because it was 1080p ProRes, I think 25 fps. Today, Resolve is probably faster than FCP was back then, so I think 16 streams of 50% ProRes Proxy at 60 fps (which is a condensed version of 1080p ProRes) is probably doable on an M4 Max Mac Studio.

Each 1080p/60 ProRes Proxy stream (which Sam already said he's using) is about 10 megabytes per sec, so 16 would be 160 MB/sec. It's not that high for an M4 Max.

Chess Olympiad 2014 - Opening Ceremony video:

Below is a 64-layer timeline edited in 2014 in FCPX on a "trash can" Mac Pro. The original timeline showed 64 separate concurrent layers at certain points. This was possible because it was 1080p ProRes, I think 25 fps. Today, Resolve is probably faster than FCP was back then, so I think 16 streams of 50% ProRes Proxy at 60 fps (which is a condensed version of 1080p ProRes) is probably doable on an M4 Max Mac Studio.

Again: good luck with that. I don't think it's reasonable to expect 16 streams of 60fps anything. I have definitely seen 12 streams of 24fps material (even 10 years ago) with low-res proxies, so that's been possible for a long time. But 4K? 60fps? Heavy timelines (which to me means, complex transitions, noise reduction, blur nodes, keys, and so on)? I tend to doubt it.

I've worked on 22-camera concert projects (several of them), but all were shot at 24fps, and the editor broke the sequences down to fewer and fewer cameras, discarding everything except the moments actually needed for the final show. So at no time were all 22 angles up simultaneously. They just made a lot of notes, used assistants in multiple rooms, and eventually did the actual switching with maybe 8 angles of pre-edited material. There's a system to it that can work, but it doesn't require having 16 tiny images up on one monitor at once.

In what situation you use 18 or 22 streams?

Again: good luck with that. I don't think it's reasonable to expect 16 streams of 60fps anything. I have definitely seen 12 streams of 24fps material (even 10 years ago) with low-res proxies, so that's been possible for a long time. But 4K? 60fps? Heavy timelines (which to me means, complex transitions, noise reduction, blur nodes, keys, and so on)? I tend to doubt it.

I've worked on 22-camera concert projects (several of them), but all were shot at 24fps, and the editor broke the sequences down to fewer and fewer cameras, discarding everything except the moments actually needed for the final show. So at no time were all 22 angles up simultaneously. They just made a lot of notes, used assistants in multiple rooms, and eventually did the actual switching with maybe 8 angles of pre-edited material. There's a system to it that can work, but it doesn't require having 16 tiny images up on one monitor at once.

Thanks for that. I can tell you that it plays back fine, no dropped frames, on the M2 Ultra Mac Studio I'm trying out. I also ordered a M4 Max Mac Studio to see if it could also handle the project.

For many reasons though, I can't just drop certain cameras. This is the race portion of an event, but I have interviews and studio footage to mix in as well. It's also a comedy, so it's surprising which camera angles sell different jokes better.

I'll do some tests later to see how many tracks the M2 Ultra can play back.

Again: good luck with that. I don't think it's reasonable to expect 16 streams of 60fps anything. I have definitely seen 12 streams of 24fps material (even 10 years ago) with low-res proxies, so that's been possible for a long time. But 4K? 60fps? Heavy timelines (which to me means, complex transitions, noise reduction, blur nodes, keys, and so on)? I tend to doubt it.

I've worked on 22-camera concert projects (several of them), but all were shot at 24fps, and the editor broke the sequences down to fewer and fewer cameras, discarding everything except the moments actually needed for the final show. So at no time were all 22 angles up simultaneously. They just made a lot of notes, used assistants in multiple rooms, and eventually did the actual switching with maybe 8 angles of pre-edited material. There's a system to it that can work, but it doesn't require having 16 tiny images up on one monitor at once.

Thanks for that. I can tell you that it plays back fine, no dropped frames, on the M2 Ultra Mac Studio I'm trying out. I also ordered a M4 Max Mac Studio to see if it could also handle the project.

For many reasons though, I can't just drop certain cameras. This is the race portion of an event, but I have interviews and studio footage to mix in as well. It's also a comedy, so it's surprising which camera angles sell different jokes better.

I'll do some tests later to see how many tracks the M2 Ultra can play back.

Marc means by good luck: you will not get realtime playback using 8K footge at 60fps, 18+ simultaneous streams with heavy timelines which normaly means, complex transitions, noise reduction, blur nodes, keys, and so on. I agree with him, unless you are planing to render cache every change you do.

In case this is what you meant, I certainly wasn't offended by the "good luck" comment and absolutely did not mean to offend Mark with my response. I believe though he was saying 4k60p files of 15 and over are always going to be a problem playing back--especially once more filters are applied. The way I generally work is to cut the number of tracks in the timeline down as the edit goes on and usually don't apply too many filters until that time. I was mainly asking about playback when the clips have only a lut and/or maybe another node of color correction.

So, the question is likely now whether paying around $700 more for an M3 Ultra Mac Studio is worth it over an M2 Ultra Mac Studio. The main differences that I can see are the M3 Ultra has:
- 32gb more universal memory
- 4 more performance CPU cores
- Thunderblot 5 (M2 Ultra has Thunderbolt 4)

In case this is what you meant, I certainly wasn't offended by the "good luck" comment and absolutely did not mean to offend Mark with my response. I believe though he was saying 4k60p files of 15 and over are always going to be a problem playing back--especially once more filters are applied. The way I generally work is to cut the number of tracks in the timeline down as the edit goes on and usually don't apply too many filters until that time. I was mainly asking about playback when the clips have only a lut and/or maybe another node of color correction.

So, the question is likely now whether paying around $700 more for an M3 Ultra Mac Studio is worth it over an M2 Ultra Mac Studio. The main differences that I can see are the M3 Ultra has:
- 32gb more universal memory
- 4 more performance CPU cores
- Thunderblot 5 (M2 Ultra has Thunderbolt 4)

Well, if you meant 4k60p then I think it is possible to get realtime playback with "light" timeline (LUT or a single node for color correction) with 15+ streams.

However, I am no expert in Mac so can not provide info. But if I was you, I woud pay the extra $700 since this is for paid job.

Thank you for that. I'm just getting conflicting reports on the Resolve performance from the M2 Ultra vs M3 Ultra. Some reports, like from Luke Miani, show only minor improvement, whereas the Puget Bench score shows a much wider gap.

Thanks for this, but I'm confused what you mean by 256GB. Are you talking about memory, SSD capacity, or something else?

System RAM.

Sorry, I missed this before. It was my understanding that extra RAM, or in this case Apple universal memory, came more into play in the Fusion page and didn't play too big a role in the Edit page once you cross the threshold of something like 64gb. Is this wrong?

Thanks for this, but I'm confused what you mean by 256GB. Are you talking about memory, SSD capacity, or something else?

System RAM.

Sorry, I missed this before. It was my understanding that extra RAM, or in this case Apple universal memory, came more into play in the Fusion page and didn't play too big a role in the Edit page once you cross the threshold of something like 64gb. Is this wrong?

Nop, more RAM is also very beneficial in the Edit and Color pages, especially if you work with 8K+ resolution. It surly helps with large and heavy timelines with heavy gradings. Generly speaking more RAM always helps run any system smoother and faster becouse with more RAM, software keeps everything in RAM instead of caching to the SSD which is much slower, and this naturally speeds-up everything including the over all responsiveness of the user interface. Also more RAM helps your system run smoothly when operating multiple applications runing alongside Resolve.

In Windows machines, we always have the option to uprgae the RAM when we need it, but on Mac you dont have this option, so you better get more than what you need today.

...So, the question is likely now whether paying around $700 more for an M3 Ultra Mac Studio is worth it over an M2 Ultra Mac Studio. The main differences that I can see are the M3 Ultra has:
- 32gb more universal memory
- 4 more performance CPU cores
- Thunderblot 5 (M2 Ultra has Thunderbolt 4)

The M3 Ultra has about 16% better single-core performance than the M2 Ultra, about 20% better neural processor performance. However, the M4 Max is about 80% faster. Resolve may use that for things like Magic Mask, Depth Map, and some of the new AI features on ver. 20.

The M3 and M4 GPUs have Apple's "Dynamic Caching" technique. That is a hardware method of using GPU tile memory more efficiently. This was from Apple's Patent US20210271606A1: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20210271606A1/en

All Ultra-series CPUs have two video decoders, four encoders, and four separate ProRes decode/encode units. The Max-series CPUs have one video decode, two encoders and two separate ProRes decode/encode units. How much of that parallelism can be used depends on various things.

The M3 and M4 series have AV1 decode acceleration; the M1 and M2 don't. The AV1 codec is increasingly used by Youtube, NetFlix, and Amazon Prime since it is not patent-encumbered like HEVC and has significantly better compression efficiency at the same visual quality. For this reason alone, I would not get the M2 Ultra.

The M3 Ultra has about 16% better single-core performance than the M2 Ultra, about 20% better neural processor performance. However, the M4 Max is about 80% faster. Resolve may use that for things like Magic Mask, Depth Map, and some of the new AI features on ver. 20.

Yeah, I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing what Apple has in store in June with an M4 Ultra, or (god forbid) an M5 Ultra.

Marc means by good luck: you will not get realtime playback using 8K footge at 60fps, 18+ simultaneous streams with heavy timelines which normaly means, complex transitions, noise reduction, blur nodes, keys, and so on. I agree with him, unless you are planing to render cache every change you do.

Exactly... but let's see what happens in June/July. Maybe the M5 Ultra will change my mind that this is even possible.

But once 18 streams of 8K 60fps is possible, somebody will immediately ask for 16K 120fps. It never fails.

Nop, more RAM is also very beneficial in the Edit and Color pages, especially if you work with 8K+ resolution. It surly helps with large and heavy timelines with heavy gradings. Generly speaking more RAM always helps run any system smoother and faster becouse with more RAM, software keeps everything in RAM instead of caching to the SSD which is much slower, and this naturally speeds-up everything including the over all responsiveness of the user interface. Also more RAM helps your system run smoothly when operating multiple applications runing alongside Resolve.

In Windows machines, we always have the option to uprgae the RAM when we need it, but on Mac you dont have this option, so you better get more than what you need today.

Thank you very much for this explanation! Good to know, for sure. I had been told that NVMe speeds were now basically the same as RAM, but using them for caching instead of RAM is not the intended use of the NVMe drives and would lead to issues w them. Regardless, sounds like there are plenty of reasons to want more RAM.

I had been told that NVMe speeds were now basically the same as RAM

Not even remotely close.

DDR4 3200MT is 25.6GB/s
DDR5 6400MT is 64 GB/s

Yep, I heard wrong on that one as well! So, Rendering to RAM should be faster than to NVMe, right?

The M3 Ultra has about 16% better single-core performance than the M2 Ultra, about 20% better neural processor performance. However, the M4 Max is about 80% faster. Resolve may use that for things like Magic Mask, Depth Map, and some of the new AI features on ver. 20.

The M3 and M4 GPUs have Apple's "Dynamic Caching" technique. That is a hardware method of using GPU tile memory more efficiently. This was from Apple's Patent US20210271606A1: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20210271606A1/en

All Ultra-series CPUs have two video decoders, four encoders, and four separate ProRes decode/encode units. The Max-series CPUs have one video decode, two encoders and two separate ProRes decode/encode units. How much of that parallelism can be used depends on various things.

The M3 and M4 series have AV1 decode acceleration; the M1 and M2 don't. The AV1 codec is increasingly used by Youtube, NetFlix, and Amazon Prime since it is not patent-encumbered like HEVC and has significantly better compression efficiency at the same visual quality. For this reason alone, I would not get the M2 Ultra.

Wow, thank you very much for this! It was very educational. About the neural processing power, is that per core? So, given that the Ultra has twice as many neaural processing cores as the M4 (32 vs 16), wouldn't their performance in this area be pretty close?

Also, I looked up the AV1 a while ago, but am still confused. Is this a format we should expect cameras to start shooting in, bc I've never come across the footage.

Thanks again!

Nop, more RAM is also very beneficial in the Edit and Color pages, especially if you work with 8K+ resolution. It surly helps with large and heavy timelines with heavy gradings. Generly speaking more RAM always helps run any system smoother and faster becouse with more RAM, software keeps everything in RAM instead of caching to the SSD which is much slower, and this naturally speeds-up everything including the over all responsiveness of the user interface. Also more RAM helps your system run smoothly when operating multiple applications runing alongside Resolve.

In Windows machines, we always have the option to uprgae the RAM when we need it, but on Mac you dont have this option, so you better get more than what you need today.

Thank you very much for this explanation! Good to know, for sure. I had been told that NVMe speeds were now basically the same as RAM, but using them for caching instead of RAM is not the intended use of the NVMe drives and would lead to issues w them. Regardless, sounds like there are plenty of reasons to want more RAM.

As Andrew said, not even remotely close, and never will
RAM will always be much much faster because it uses volatile memory, however SSD uses non-volatile memory and by nature volatile memory is much much much faster.

For comparision purpose, the maximum therotical bandwidth of Gen 5 NVMe SSD is upto 14GB/s
And the maximum therotical bandwidth of DDR5 RAM is upto 128GB/s .. that is a huge diffrence. And DDR6 will be double the speed of DDR5 with an edtimated bandwidth of 256GB/s.

Another super important factor is the latency. NVMe Gen 5 SSD's latency is in the range of 100 milliseconds, however DDR5 latency is in the range of 100 nanoseconds .. that is 0.0001 milliseconds .. in other word, the latency of DDR5 RAM is 1000% shorter ( or faster).

BTW, having more RAM also helps prolong the life of SSDs. SSD life is reduced by the number of writing operation so when your system runs out of RAM, it uses part of your SSD as a virtual memory and this increase the the number of writing operation on the SSD, thus reducing its life.

Yeah, I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing what Apple has in store in June with an M4 Ultra, or (god forbid) an M5 Ultra.
Exactly... but let's see what happens in June/July. Maybe the M5 Ultra will change my mind that this is even possible.

But once 18 streams of 8K 60fps is possible, somebody will immediately ask for 16K 120fps. It never fails.

Totally agree, I'd love to see an M4 or M5 Ultra in the next few months! Part of my reluctance to buy the M3 Ultra is b/c that model should have come out w the rest of the M3 line, not as the M4 line is completing. That was a garbage move by Apple in many ways. The general talk is that there likely won't be an M4 Ultra tho. Apple has said not to expect an Ultra w every new M-series and also the M4 Max doesn't have the fiber-bridge thing that every other Max clip has had that is used to link together Max clips and make the Ultra. But, who knows? It's a fool's game to try to predict Apple releases. Lord knows I've been wrong many times.