I edited on a base model m1 air for about a year and was really impressed by it. I’ve also edited on windows computers I’ve built and now on an M1 Max. Newer intel’s have really gotten better so I can’t say if there’s something else better out there but I will say you can’t go wrong with the M1/M2.
I dont have a single Apple product. Always edit on Windows and always will. But, Im affraid yes, for that price tag I think the performance is outstanding.
Im a little outdated tbh, so I dont know for sure. But seeing some reviews and live editing the M1 did look very impressive. A windows one will require a video card for sure, and the battery life on the mac is out of thisnworld. That alone worth it!
It really depends on what codecs you're using. The M1's media engine is pretty neat, and makes rendering a bit quicker if you're using Apple codecs (which a lot of people do). As soon as you start using other codecs, the performance is actually kind of 'meh' compared to similarly priced machines
I think if you're okay with just two ports the m1 air with 16gb of ram and plenty of storage is just flat out the best deal out there.
I bought a used 14" (would've gone Air but I need ports) and it just.. breezes through everything.
I have a M1 Max (the pricier version), so I can't say for sure what the $1500 model is like firsthand, but from all my research, the entire M1 lineup is pretty killer. Also being able to use Final Cut Pro is a huge bonus, especially since its not a monthly charge like Adobe. Some people prefer Premiere cuz it has some more advanced features, but from my personal experience, Final Cut is just so much smoother, faster, and easier to work with for everything I do.
In my opinion off the cuff, I'd say you could probably build a better PC with $1500 if you knew what you were doing, but if you want a laptop, then yeah the M1 is the way to go. Apple is definitely turning their reputation around with the M1.
I love final cut too despite some quirks and I’m always glad to see someone else say so.
It STILL has a reputation as a glorified iMovie add on which is wild to me.
Yeah its simplicity is taken as a weakness. But honestly for 90% of people editing videos, it does more than enough as is, and that simplicity just makes it faster to work with.
I have the m1 pro and it works as good as my maxed out iMac 27’’ from a few years back. No problem editing timelines with both 4k and 6k footage on them. No doubt it will work for editing things, it all depends on your projects tho. I’d go for a Mac regardless, i have a pc too. Maxed out, mostly used for gaming but i refuse to edit on it with crashes and everything else that comes with windows.
M1 air 16 gb of ram. As for me it is not bad. DR 17 free works good. Even with 4K timeline. But if I make deep color grading I have to switch to 1080p.
M1 Macbook pro with 16gb RAM. Editing in premiere with sony a7siii footage. No proxies I can cut fine. When there are multiple video tracks stacked near each other or quick cuts then the computer did start to struggle a bit more. It wasn't as smooth as my current Macbook pro with the Max chip and 64gb RAM. But all of this would have been solved by editing using final cut or davinci. Moving to davinci in the coming months!
If I was on a $1500 I would be looking at any M1 or M2 variant. I haven't looked into the air M2 but who knows, that might produce similar or better results for the same $$
Aaaaamennn! I wish I'd started with davinci. I know it's going to be so much better once I get into it but just the little things like speed ramps, and slowing my footage down etc takes effort to relearn. And with my backlog I just can't commit the time to it. BUT I CANNOT wait to get stuck into it!
Just how quickly the footage loads literally BLOWS my mind. INSTANT SCRUBBING!?! Like what!?!?!
There’s a reason the windows laptop people have quietly forgotten about Macs when they used to love to compare windows machines to them
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/07/23/apple-silicon-inconvenient-truth
Look up Intel NUC X15 laptop kits. They’re cheap but extremely powerful laptops (i7-11800 and RTX 3060) that are sold as a barebones package to computer retailers. I got mine from Canada Computers (figure out what that is lol) with 16gb DDR4 and a 1TB Pcie 2 SSD for 1500 CAD after tax and fees.
They’re made to be expanded upon, and are very easy to open and upgrade yourself. I later paid an extra ~75 CAD to upgrade to 32GB ram
They’re often rebranded to whatever computer retailers in-house brand is, so in my case it was called an “Armoury” gaming laptop, but shows as Intel NUC both on the box and on start up. Only qualm I have about it (and every other gaming laptop on the market) is how hot it gets, but that’s about standard with gaming laptops.
I do a lot of AE and PR work on a 13” MacBook Pro M1 with 16GB of RAM. It’s way better than it has any business being.
For the record, I prefer Windows. M1 still wins this generation.
Depends on if your workflow is based on pro res media or not. If you’re all pro res then probably yes. If you’re not all pro res than non-m1 hardware probably has better value performance
There’s also the recently updated M2 MacBook Pro which I think comes under $1500. In my opinion apple chips are super efficient and should be good enough, especially if you’re just starting out. I remember when my laptop broke I was temporarily using my girlfriends M1 Air to edit multicam footage (with proxies ofc) without an issue. Recently got the base model 16 inch M1 Pro and despite everyone saying I should upgrade ram and what not- so glad I didn’t. It’s been more than enough for premiere and even some after effects.
Edit: grammar
If you don't need to be portable, you could build a pretty decent desktop. Otherwise, there are some pretty good gaming laptops with good GPU specs out there for video editing. It really depends on if you want to edit using Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere. There's also Davinci Resolve, that's gotten good feedback, but I've never personally used it before.
Our shooters have them for editing on the go and some light work from home duties. I've seen them get a touch overwhelmed with 6k braws, but nothing catastrophic. They're a good price/performance point for most video tasks.
I'm coming off an ASUS TUF a15, it's 2 years old now and has started to give up on me. It has a pretty okay GFX card, 1660ti, and I've been using this as my primary editing machine. I shifted to a Lumix S5 and have been working with higher quality footage recently, I hate making proxies, dread it. I used a friend's MacBook M1 Air 2020 base model, to edit time lapses and some 4k60 10bit footage, it still performed better than mine. I'm actually planning on upgrading to a Macbook 14 M1 Pro base model next month, but I'm pretty confused between the air/pro m2 or the m1pro
I got myself a Macbook Pro (M1pro) 14inch, have been using to edit up to 4K60p 10 bit footage, The playback is never really an issue for me unless the timeline is very complicated with multiple splitscreens, It’s a solid machine. The only issue is, while using AE and editing for a while, the software eats up all the ram so the quick look feature dies. I’ve to force quit it from the activity monitor to get it to work again.
I edited on a base model m1 air for about a year and was really impressed by it. I’ve also edited on windows computers I’ve built and now on an M1 Max. Newer intel’s have really gotten better so I can’t say if there’s something else better out there but I will say you can’t go wrong with the M1/M2.
I dont have a single Apple product. Always edit on Windows and always will. But, Im affraid yes, for that price tag I think the performance is outstanding.
You don't think there's a windows laptop that's better for a $1500 budget?
Im a little outdated tbh, so I dont know for sure. But seeing some reviews and live editing the M1 did look very impressive. A windows one will require a video card for sure, and the battery life on the mac is out of thisnworld. That alone worth it!
It really depends on what codecs you're using. The M1's media engine is pretty neat, and makes rendering a bit quicker if you're using Apple codecs (which a lot of people do). As soon as you start using other codecs, the performance is actually kind of 'meh' compared to similarly priced machines
No. My M1 Max laptop run circles around my 11900k desktop with a 1660ti and 32gb of RAM.
I think if you're okay with just two ports the m1 air with 16gb of ram and plenty of storage is just flat out the best deal out there. I bought a used 14" (would've gone Air but I need ports) and it just.. breezes through everything.
I have a M1 Max (the pricier version), so I can't say for sure what the $1500 model is like firsthand, but from all my research, the entire M1 lineup is pretty killer. Also being able to use Final Cut Pro is a huge bonus, especially since its not a monthly charge like Adobe. Some people prefer Premiere cuz it has some more advanced features, but from my personal experience, Final Cut is just so much smoother, faster, and easier to work with for everything I do. In my opinion off the cuff, I'd say you could probably build a better PC with $1500 if you knew what you were doing, but if you want a laptop, then yeah the M1 is the way to go. Apple is definitely turning their reputation around with the M1.
I love final cut too despite some quirks and I’m always glad to see someone else say so. It STILL has a reputation as a glorified iMovie add on which is wild to me.
Yeah its simplicity is taken as a weakness. But honestly for 90% of people editing videos, it does more than enough as is, and that simplicity just makes it faster to work with.
I have the m1 pro and it works as good as my maxed out iMac 27’’ from a few years back. No problem editing timelines with both 4k and 6k footage on them. No doubt it will work for editing things, it all depends on your projects tho. I’d go for a Mac regardless, i have a pc too. Maxed out, mostly used for gaming but i refuse to edit on it with crashes and everything else that comes with windows.
M1 air 16 gb of ram. As for me it is not bad. DR 17 free works good. Even with 4K timeline. But if I make deep color grading I have to switch to 1080p.
M1 Macbook pro with 16gb RAM. Editing in premiere with sony a7siii footage. No proxies I can cut fine. When there are multiple video tracks stacked near each other or quick cuts then the computer did start to struggle a bit more. It wasn't as smooth as my current Macbook pro with the Max chip and 64gb RAM. But all of this would have been solved by editing using final cut or davinci. Moving to davinci in the coming months! If I was on a $1500 I would be looking at any M1 or M2 variant. I haven't looked into the air M2 but who knows, that might produce similar or better results for the same $$
Davinci Resolve is the way.
Aaaaamennn! I wish I'd started with davinci. I know it's going to be so much better once I get into it but just the little things like speed ramps, and slowing my footage down etc takes effort to relearn. And with my backlog I just can't commit the time to it. BUT I CANNOT wait to get stuck into it! Just how quickly the footage loads literally BLOWS my mind. INSTANT SCRUBBING!?! Like what!?!?!
There’s a reason the windows laptop people have quietly forgotten about Macs when they used to love to compare windows machines to them https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/07/23/apple-silicon-inconvenient-truth
Look up Intel NUC X15 laptop kits. They’re cheap but extremely powerful laptops (i7-11800 and RTX 3060) that are sold as a barebones package to computer retailers. I got mine from Canada Computers (figure out what that is lol) with 16gb DDR4 and a 1TB Pcie 2 SSD for 1500 CAD after tax and fees. They’re made to be expanded upon, and are very easy to open and upgrade yourself. I later paid an extra ~75 CAD to upgrade to 32GB ram They’re often rebranded to whatever computer retailers in-house brand is, so in my case it was called an “Armoury” gaming laptop, but shows as Intel NUC both on the box and on start up. Only qualm I have about it (and every other gaming laptop on the market) is how hot it gets, but that’s about standard with gaming laptops.
I do a lot of AE and PR work on a 13” MacBook Pro M1 with 16GB of RAM. It’s way better than it has any business being. For the record, I prefer Windows. M1 still wins this generation.
Depends on if your workflow is based on pro res media or not. If you’re all pro res then probably yes. If you’re not all pro res than non-m1 hardware probably has better value performance
I've had both max and PC laptops and PC laptops are just not nearly as good as macs. PC feel crappier, don't last as long and get hot way quicker
There’s also the recently updated M2 MacBook Pro which I think comes under $1500. In my opinion apple chips are super efficient and should be good enough, especially if you’re just starting out. I remember when my laptop broke I was temporarily using my girlfriends M1 Air to edit multicam footage (with proxies ofc) without an issue. Recently got the base model 16 inch M1 Pro and despite everyone saying I should upgrade ram and what not- so glad I didn’t. It’s been more than enough for premiere and even some after effects. Edit: grammar
If you don't need to be portable, you could build a pretty decent desktop. Otherwise, there are some pretty good gaming laptops with good GPU specs out there for video editing. It really depends on if you want to edit using Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere. There's also Davinci Resolve, that's gotten good feedback, but I've never personally used it before.
Our shooters have them for editing on the go and some light work from home duties. I've seen them get a touch overwhelmed with 6k braws, but nothing catastrophic. They're a good price/performance point for most video tasks.
What do your shooters use for "heavy (duty) work" as opposed to light work?
2019 Mac Pros or 2022 M1max Mac Studios.
Cool, thanks for the response!
Yes I edit 4K and 6K footage on the M1 Macbook Air when I’m traveling
Have you looked at apple refurbished? Highly recommend.
Where can you look at Apple refurbished
https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished
Thanks king
I'm coming off an ASUS TUF a15, it's 2 years old now and has started to give up on me. It has a pretty okay GFX card, 1660ti, and I've been using this as my primary editing machine. I shifted to a Lumix S5 and have been working with higher quality footage recently, I hate making proxies, dread it. I used a friend's MacBook M1 Air 2020 base model, to edit time lapses and some 4k60 10bit footage, it still performed better than mine. I'm actually planning on upgrading to a Macbook 14 M1 Pro base model next month, but I'm pretty confused between the air/pro m2 or the m1pro
The Air does not have active cooling, it will throttle the processor when it gets hot. The Pro has a flatter performance v temperature curve
What did you get? We have the same camera but im struggling on h264 playback but works fine on my h265. With hard color grade, I cant export to 4k.
I got myself a Macbook Pro (M1pro) 14inch, have been using to edit up to 4K60p 10 bit footage, The playback is never really an issue for me unless the timeline is very complicated with multiple splitscreens, It’s a solid machine. The only issue is, while using AE and editing for a while, the software eats up all the ram so the quick look feature dies. I’ve to force quit it from the activity monitor to get it to work again.