This articles details the performance of the M2 Pro Mac mini, specifically the speed of rendering visual effects and exporting projects in Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro. 77 tests were performed and some of the answers are surprising!
The new 2023 Mac mini is a powerhouse – especially when equipped with an M2 Pro SoC. In this detailed analysis, Larry Jordan looks at the performance of the M2 Mac mini specifically for use editing media in Apple Final Cut Pro.
Guest writer Clara Carlson explores the ethical concerns associated with the use of AI-generated content in the media industry and its potential impact on the creative workforce.
This you won’t believe. I tested to see how many streams of 4K media Final Cut Pro can edit in a multicam clip. The answer blew me away. These are the details.
A frequent question is whether a computer has the power an editor needs. Here I look at what Adobe Premiere Pro needs for 4K multicam editing and the speeds your storage needs to support. The answer is not what you expect.
A frequent question is whether a computer has the power an editor needs. Here I look at what Apple Final Cut Pro needs for 4K multicam editing and the speeds your storage needs to support. The answer is not what you expect.
The coordinate system in Motion and Final Cut makes creating effects with multiple images simple – once you understand how it works and how to properly scale the video clips. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial that will help you understand this.
While both ProRes 422 and ProRes 4444 are much larger than the original HEVC (or H.264, for that matter), the structural design of ProRes makes it more suitable for faster editing performance, especially for multicam editing. These details illustrate the difference.
There are people who make a living predicting the future. I am not one of them. Still, I want to share some thoughts about the future of video editing because media is about to get much more challenging.
Earlier this week Alteon.io announced Alteon Accelerator, a new desktop application that maximizes upload speeds. Here’s an interview with Matt Cimaglia, CEO of Alteon, to learn more about what this service offers.
In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan explains what speech-to-text is in Premiere, then shows how to create transcripts from your sequences using it.
Digital video no longer requires state-of-the-art hardware. We no longer need the biggest, fastest, most powerful system to get our work done. Here’s what you need to consider for a video editing system today.
Multicam editing allows us to edit several camera clips at the same time. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to use the multicam Angle Editor in Apple Final Cut Pro, along with some advanced techniques that make multicam files easier to edit.
Apple ProRes is a family of media codecs. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan explains what the different versions of ProRes are and how to pick the right version for your next video project.
As we increasingly move to hand-held cameras, shaky shots are a fact of life. The Warp Stabilizer effect in Adobe Premiere Pro is a great way to keep your audience involved in your story without them losing their lunch. Here’s how to use it effectively.
Shaky video footage can cause an audience to get motion sick watching your program. Fortunately, Apple Final Cut Pro provides three ways to smooth shaky footage. Here’s an illustrated tutorial on how these work.
Here are some real-world speed tests of 2-, 3-, and 4-drive SSD RAIDs using the OWC Thunderblade. Speeds are fast, but none fully fill a Thunderbolt 3/4 connection. Still, they are more than fast enough for almost all editing.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for the Mac brings missing files back to life. It does so for a wide range of files and devices. But the interface is flaky, core features are unreliable, and the entire application needs someone to pay much closer attention to it. Here’s Larry Jordan’s review.
macOS Ventura is significantly (masses of megabytes!) slower than macOS Monterey for both ExFAT- and APFS-formatted SSD drives. No one know why. Worse, formatting drives is now harder than before. Here are the details.
“Ask Larry Anything!” is a free-form conversation about video editing technology. In this short tutorial, Larry Jordan illustrates real-world speeds for SSDs and RAIDs, along with details on how much storage speed we actually need for editing video smoothly. The answers will surprise you.
This tutorial measures and illustrates the difference in speeds between different SSD (Solid State Drive) RAID levels. This also provides definitions of these different levels and recommendations on which to use for your storage.
How fast does our storage need to be to edit video successfully? In other words: How fast is “fast enough?” Surprising, the answer is: Not as fast as you think. Here’s what you need to know.
Measuring the speed of storage is an exercise in futility for a whole lot of reasons. Here’s what you need to know when you want to measure the speed of your system.
Here are the step-by-step instructions for creating or deleting a multi-disk RAID 0 or RAID 1 storage system using Apple’s Disk Utility, which ships with every Mac.
The OWC Thunderblade is a four-blade SSD RAID with speeds that more than meet the needs of virtually all video editors or audio mixers. This thing is plenty fast – the trick is figuring out exactly HOW fast. Read a detailed product review from Larry Jordan.
The speed our storage transfers data, is surprisingly variable and complex, especially regarding SSDs, RAIDs and Thunderbolt. In this conversation with Tim Standing, from OWC, learn what limits the speed of Thunderbolt storage and what you can do to maximize it.
Larry continues his on-going report on configuring and using a media asset management system – and making it accessible to remote users. His example features axle.ai software.
MagicMenu expands what we can do when we right-click a file or the Finder. It is fast, affordable, customizable and flexible. It supports Apple silicon systems. Though it isn’t perfect, it can save you a lot of time.
This review of storage speed-testing software AmorphousDiskMark, from Katsura Software. This details how it works, the consistency of its results and compares it to Blackmagic Design’s Disk Speed Test. However, there are questions about its accuracy.
There is a large, significant difference in measuring storage speeds when using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test versus AJA System Test Lite. The problem is that we don’t know which one is more accurate. Here are the details.
Is there a speed difference between the three Thunderbolt ports on an 16″ M1 MacBook Pro? Larry Jordan tests his system to find out.
Recently, Alteon.io announced a new workflow extension for Final Cut Pro that provides an end-to-end media workflow from within FCP. (They also have one for Adobe Premiere Pro.) In this interview with Larry Jordan, CEO Matt Cimaglia explains why Alteon is, why video editors should consider it and how it compares to the competition.
In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan explains that Thunderbolt, though very fast, still has speed limits, especially for video editing. And those speed limits vary, depending upon what you are doing.
In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan explains what affects computer system performance for video editing, what can slow down your data and what speeds we should expect from our gear. There’s a lot that can affect the performance of your system.
Nothing replaces directly-connected storage for speed. But nothing is better at sharing than a server. The Synology DS-1522+ is an excellent choice for any small network. Here’s a detailed review, including configuration and performance tests.
Servers are designed for sharing data. In this tutorial, Larry Jordan looks at how to install hardware into Synology DS 1522+ server, then interviews Patrick Deshere, from Synology, about how to pick the right server for your office.
One of our favorite – and most wide-ranging – sessions returns with “Ask Larry Anything!” Presented by Larry Jordan, this is a free-form conversation based on questions submitted by viewers. In this short video tutorial, Larry presents three methods of importing only a portion of a video clip into Apple Final Cut Pro – along with an explanation of why you can’t.
One of our favorite – and most wide-ranging – sessions returns with “Ask Larry Anything!” Presented by Larry Jordan, this is a free-form conversation based on questions submitted by viewers. In this short video tutorial, Larry explains the challenges of maximizing performance when using hard disk drive RAIDs for video editing.
The speed of a local-area network is dependent upon a number of factors, some of which we have more control of than others. Here’s a list of what to check to improve your network speed, without replacing the server.
Color management for HDR media in Premiere Pro is rapidly changing. For now, it’s a mess with too many color settings that need to be changed manually, with color results that vary inconsistently between clips. iPhone video is a special problem. Here’s what you need to know.
SSDs offer far faster performance and, when combined into a RAID, storage equal to spinning hard disks. But, there are traps to avoid. Here’s what you need to know. (Featuring an in-depth technical interview with Tim Standing, VP Software Engineering, OWC.)
Confused when comparing Intel to Apple silicon systems? Jerry Thompson was, too. Here are the answers to your questions on what the differences are between Apple silicon and Intel, along with suggestions on how to spec a system.
Picking a high-quality computer monitor for video editing is surprisingly confusing. Here is Larry Jordan’s explanation of what specs you need to look for, which you can ignore, and what criteria he uses for picking computer and video monitors.
No monitor is perfect, but if images are your life, you should make the effort to check out the ViewSonic VP2776. When I look at the same image on all three monitor connected to my Mac, the ViewSonic looks the best. Here’s a detailed review.
Which combination of hard disk or SSD storage provides the fastest speed or highest capacity for video editing? This illustrated tutorial will answer these questions, plus provide a spreadsheet you can use to test your own numbers. This works for Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Apple Final Cut Pro editors.
Here are two very clever workarounds to create short extracts of much larger media files to save storage space when importing video into Apple Final Cut Pro.
Even the largest RAIDs fill up. If you own an OWC RAID, you can safely and easily archive RAID sets for archiving and storage. Loren Miller explains the process in this highly-illustrated, step-by-step tutorial.
Thunderbolt is an amazing protocol and essential to many video workflows. However, it isn’t a magic box. Once you understand what affects the speeds it can transfer data, you can better plan for how to use it. This tutorial explains what impacts the speed of a Thunderbolt device.
August is vacation time. Still, over these five weeks, we published 19 tutorials and product reviews. Here’s a summary of everything we released this month. Something to look through during the holiday weekend.
Axle.ai is a fast, powerful and customizable media asset management system that is designed for the needs of a small to medium sized workgroup. This is an in-depth product review, along with an interview with Axle.ai CEO Sam Bogoch.
