The compression bit rate was set to 10,000 kbps for all three apps. Test 1: Encode the ProRes 4444 file into H.264 and add a watermark. I’ve run into this problem before and have no idea why Media Encoder fails to read a ProRes 4444 file. I finally changed source files until I found one AME could open. I exported the file four times and it was unable to read it each time though it would open perfectly in QuickTime Player, Compressor and ffWorks. NOTE: For some reason, Adobe Media Encoder is not always able to open a ProRes 4444 file exported from Apple Final Cut Pro. The test file was a 54:11 QuickTime ProRes 4444 file (1440 x 810 pixels with stereo audio). Note that it has an i7 CPU, but only 8 GB of RAM and Intel’s GPU, which is not noted for its speed. Here are the specs for the Mac mini I added in the updated version of these tests. However, it was what I used every day until Monday last week.) Notice that it has an Intel i5 CPU this is not as fast as an i7 or i9, but a high-performance graphics card. This is the Intel system that I used for reference. Also, in general, encoding speed is not dependent upon the amount of RAM. (I don’t, currently, have a way to test the M1 Max.) My suspicion is that the GPU has an impact on compression speed, but I don’t know to what extent it will probably vary by software. NOTE: Both the M1 Pro and M1 Max have 10-core CPUs, though not the same number of GPU cores. Notice it’s running the latest version of macOS. Here’s the new system, with an M1 Pro CPU. You’ll find all the new results in the Update section below. I also re-ran the tests using the latest version of ffWorks (v3) and a version of FFmpeg optimized for Apple silicon CPUs both of which were released after initial publication. So, I added test results from a 2018 Mac mini with an i7 CPU. UPDATE: A criticism I received after initially publishing this was that the Intel i5 CPU is significantly slower than an i7 or i9. However, I have not had any problem when using FFmpeg to read ProRes files and convert them into other formats for YouTube, my website or other social media. For this reason, they caution against using any software running FFmpeg for creating ProRes files. However, Apple has said that FFmpeg has reverse-engineered, rather than licensed, its ProRes implementation. Why did I choose ffWorks? Because, like Handbrake, its compression engine is FFmpeg, which is widely used in media software. However, none of the compressed files it created could be opened. NOTE: I originally wanted to use Handbrake for this test. Here, too, I would expect compression speeds to be similar.ĮXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Regardless of the software you prefer to use, the M1 MacBook Pro makes encoding into any video format MUCH faster! Also, we will discover that compression speed is not dependent upon how hard the CPUs are working, how fast the hard disk transfers data or, in Intel systems, which CPU you are using. As well, Adobe Premiere Pro uses the same compression engine for its exports that’s in Adobe Media Encoder. NOTE: Apple Final Cut Pro and Compressor use the same compression engine I would expect compression speeds to be similar. This is one of those articles that takes forever to create, yet can be understood in less than a minute. In this article, I compare the compression speed of Apple Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder (AME) and ffWorks (FFmpeg) on a new M1 MacBook Pro vs.
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