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Desktops (Apple) Portables (Apple) Windows Graphics Media Software Apple Hardware Technology

Pro Video Editor Says MacBook Pro Beats Out Superior Spec'd Windows Machines In Real-World (9to5mac.com) 259

Posted by BeauHD from the optimization-is-key dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Reviews for Apple's new MacBook Pro have yet to officially go live, despite a couple false starts earlier this week. Those should arrive any day now ahead of a retail release for the machine, but one pro video editor today published his early hands-on review after using the new 15-inch model in a real-world setting. The review also aims to address some of the early criticisms of the new MacBook Pro from pros, showing how the machine held up in a real-world, professional environment. The author Thomas Grove Carter works at Trim Editing, a studio in London where he edits "high end commercials, music videos and films" using Final Cut Pro. The review specifically focuses on the experience using the machine in a professional video editor's daily workflow. Carter's conclusion is that the new 15-inch model he was using (he doesn't detail specs), is more than capable of handling daily editing in FCP X with 5K ProRes footage. He also notes that machine "tears strips off 'superior spec'd' Windows counterparts in the real world." Thomas Grove Carter writes: "First off, It's really fast. I've been using the MacBook Pro with the new version of FCP X and cutting 5k ProRes material all week, it's buttery smooth. No matter what you think the specs say, the fact is the software and hardware are so well integrated it tears strips off 'superior spec'd' Windows counterparts in the real world. This has always been true of Macs. If you're running software with old code which doesn't utilize the hardware well, you're not going to get great performance (as pointed out here)."
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Pro Video Editor Says MacBook Pro Beats Out Superior Spec'd Windows Machines In Real-World More

Pro Video Editor Says MacBook Pro Beats Out Superior Spec'd Windows Machines In Real-World

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  • Yeah well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:08PM (#53261603) Journal

    I still want my MagSafe

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mlts ( 1038732 )

      I wished Apple would have a special connector that routed USB-C through MagSafe, so the MagSafe connector could do power and data. That way, with one plug, I could have it attached to a port replicator, and with enough PCI lines, have decent video, perhaps a real GPU, etc.

      • For crying out loud, just don't string your power cord across anywhere someone else will walk.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vux984 ( 928602 )

          Yeah! For crying out loud, why don't you just rearrange all the furniture in other people's houses and offices to accomodate your need to keep doing something when your battery runs low in such way that the outlet is never accross any space a person or pet might traverse! Jeez why didn't i think of that?

          • You're right, in some 12th century castles they didn't put the seats close enough to the power outlets to find some workable solution within provided length of cord.

    • I still want my MagSafe

      Absolutely! And without a stupid dongle to carry around.

      In any case, why relegate one of your high-bandwidth connectors (USB-C) to simply juicing up your laptop? Sure, a $85 dongle will provide data-throughput while charging... Why not put that simple DC-charging port, w/Mag-Safe, back in?

      I don't care if the new MBP is 0.5 mm thinner. Nuts to that! It needs energy, in any user situation, so provide a 'dumb' plug (or Mag-Safe) that lets me charge-up without a tangle of wires?!?!!!?!!11??? Others will s

  • When are you finally going metric? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:10PM (#53261609)

    How fast is a strip and what happens when I tear it?

  • Apple lover promotes Apple product (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:12PM (#53261619)

    News at 11

    • Re: Apple lover promotes Apple product (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      / I will make a point of not listing the specs, just take me word for it /

      Seems questionable at best.

      • Re: Apple lover promotes Apple product (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10, 2016 @10:44PM (#53262273)
        Oh, it's worse than that - it's purely speculative as he hasn't even used a Windows machine to make the comparison.
    • they have been doing so since the beginning - nothing changes, well, perhaps the reviewer got a new mac ;-)

    • Apple Reality Distortion Field (tm) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thesupraman ( 179040 ) on Friday November 11, 2016 @05:05AM (#53263775)

      Just the usual ARFD effect.

      'My computer, despite being slower in all measurable specifications, is FASTER! HA! AND I AM A PROFESSIONAL!'
      Followed by turning of the back, fingers in ears, and reciting of 'nya nya nya nya I cannot hear you nya nya'

      And in the real works, people keep on getting work done, knowing that in actual fact, the exact machine specs, OS, etc
      have such a small effect on a persons productivity, that it is unimportant.

      Not to mention that fact that if he really is doing such high grade video work, and is using ANY laptop, he just doesnt get it,
      as a much more powerful desktop will be much MUCH more productive (for a start, it will have monitors where he can actually
      see the video he is working on... RAID storage so a drive crash wont lose all his work, much more RAM to allow a decent video
      buffer, and more cores, because video processing IS embarrassingly parallel and scales nearly perfectly).

      So, basically a chump. example what the media loves for clickbait.

      • For video editing the software makes a huge difference as well. Is there anything for Windows or Linux with even remotely close performance to Final Cut Pro? I am yet to see it but open to suggestions, adobe premier is about 12x slower, whether run on Mac or Windows

      • The only thing the Apple users have correct in which I give credit is PC screens SUCK! IPS is almost non existent so the colors and gamma do not look the same at different angles and the calibration SUCKS. if you are viewing a screen from a coworker you are seeing something different.

        Now there are expensive ok screens for the PC that cost hundreds which I highly recommend for any engineer, salesperson (to show stuff to clients), and video artists. But, none for the laptops.

        Actually the MS Surface is IPS and

  • What Codec? What Bitrate? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:16PM (#53261629)

    ProRes was designed to be a very easy on the CPU.

    Is he using plain ProRes which is really designed just for HD, or ProRes 4444 or 4444XQ which will be much more demanding.

    How does it perform with 5k RED or other RAW codecs?

    • ProRes 4444/4444XQ are higher bitrate than ProRes422/422HQ, but they are lightly compressed and not especially demanding on the CPU provided you have the disk throughput. I can edit 1080p 4444/4444XQ on a 2013 macbook air.

      Read this [apple.com] whitepaper. It shows that a mid-2014 macbook pro can decode 2 streams of 4444XQ 4K p24 and 16 streams of 4444XQ 1080p24.

      The more highly compressed codecs (eg H.264/AVC based codecs) demand more processing power to encode or decode.

      Most pro editors/DITs use RED rockets

  • FX Pro on apple.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:17PM (#53261639)

    FX Pro is only available using a apple PC - so how can you compare it to windows???

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nnull ( 1148259 )
      Put it in Vmware on a windows laptop then claim how slow it is compared to a natively installed version on the Mac?

    • Re:FX Pro on apple.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by seoras ( 147590 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @09:05PM (#53261869)

      You don't. If you watch the video (click on the "here" link at the end of the summary) he makes it clear that he's comparing time to get to an end result.

      Not hardware. The complete package. Hardware + software.

      Sure you could boot the MBP in Windows and do a like for like but that's not what any (sane) person would do right?
      If you want a Windows or Linux machine you aren't going to pay for software you won't use and discard, right?
      With the MBP you are paying for not just raw hardware but the software too.

      People do actually still pay for software, it's how software engineers get paid and eat.
      Either you pay up front (Apple) or you pay with adverts (Google/Facebook/etc) or by giving up your personal data (Google).

      Sorry if I'm a bit tetchy, as a software engineer I do get tired of people expecting me to work as hard as they do but for free.

      • Re:FX Pro on apple.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10, 2016 @09:24PM (#53261961)

        The problem is that means his "full process" includes the fact that he already knows what he is doing on a mac, and he likes the workflow on a mac.

        If you got me to test even something simple like image editing software on a mac vs a PC, I'd blow the shit out of anything using my PC, because I know the software and the workflow, I know the filesystem, I know the window system, I just know what I am doing.

        On a mac; I'd get there; I wouldn't do it wrong, I just wouldn't know what I was doing half the time for stuff that is second nature to me on a windows machine. Hell I know all the windows keyboard shortcuts in the OS I just know what I am doing.

        Does that mean Windows "tears strips off Mac" for whatever bullshit test I am running?

        No, it means my workflow, my inputs, my required outputs have been tuned for whatever test I am running on one OS; and aren't on another.

        His test is meaningless if its "My mac specific workflow tears strips off a potential windows specific workflow which I don't really like". Because they aren't comparable things.

        • Re:FX Pro on apple.... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10, 2016 @10:13PM (#53262149)

          It would have been meaningful if he talked about Adobe Premiere instead. Adobe has equivalent video products for Mac and Windows (and, from personal and anecdotal and thus worthless experience, they beat the pants off of Final Cut Pro X). He could have benchmarked render times or even workflow times by comparing Adobe's products on Windows and Apple machines. He didn't.

      • Re:FX Pro on apple.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Gussington ( 4512999 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @11:00PM (#53262353)

        You don't. If you watch the video (click on the "here" link at the end of the summary) he makes it clear that he's comparing time to get to an end result

        TFA is about an unspecified spec MBP running better than an unspecified spec Win Laptop. TFA is a pure opinion piece which has no place in this forum. I'd be interested if it had hard numbers, and also did a comparison on performance vs cost, which is ultimately what counts most.

        • I am surprised that nobody has mentioned cost until now.

          The fact that windows is the standard in business, and government, is another huge factor. Uprooting your windows infrastructure, and replace it with apple would be a huge endeavor. Everybody would have to retrained, you would have to buy all new applications, and so on.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lucm ( 889690 )

        People do actually still pay for software, it's how software engineers get paid and eat.
        Either you pay up front (Apple) or you pay with adverts (Google/Facebook/etc) or by giving up your personal data (Google).

        Yes, I wish there was an alternative to proprietary, closed source software.

      • Re:FX Pro on apple.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by peppepz ( 1311345 ) on Friday November 11, 2016 @03:23AM (#53263497)

        You don't. If you watch the video (click on the "here" link at the end of the summary) he makes it clear that he's comparing time to get to an end result. Not hardware. The complete package. Hardware + software.

        He's not comparing hardware and software to get an end result. He's comparing hardware and software to get two different end results (running two different programs, arbitrarily chosen). Hence the comparison does not make any sense whatsoever. Different programs take different time to run on different computers and you can't infer anything from that.

        He then goes further on, providing an explanation (that the macbook pro is faster because it is more "optimized") without any proof (he didn't actually indicate what optimization is there on the mac and isn't there on the pc) for a fact that he didn't measure in the first place (that the macbook pro is faster).

        This video makes as much sense as buying a 2016 macbook pro.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by oranac ( 1632605 )
      This is the only relevant response to this silly shit. Unless you can benchmark it, stfu.
    • That's then point...Final Cut Pro is only on MacOS, nothing on Windows comes close to Final Cut Pro performance

    • Pfft since Apple neutered their products all the real video editors switched to that monster Adobe Premiere.

  • Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:18PM (#53261647)

    The Windows one can be upgraded past 16gb of ram so not sure how that's going to work out for you....

    • So can the MacBook Pro. What Apple says it can be upgraded to, and what it can actually handle are two different beasts. To wit, my 2011 iMac is upgraded well past the max 16GB professed by Apple, as is my MacBook pro.

      • So can the MacBook Pro. What Apple says it can be upgraded to, and what it can actually handle are two different beasts.

        Not since the Retina models.

        To wit, my 2011 iMac is upgraded well past the max 16GB professed by Apple, as is my MacBook pro.

        Your 2011 iMac has 4 RAM slots and uses a chipset that supports 8GB DIMMs, your MacBook Pro hasn't been updated since 2013, has 2 RAM slots and uses a chipset that supports 8GB DIMMs. Those machines can use 32GB and 16GB, respectively. The current iMac models are no different; the current MacBook Pro models, starting with the first Retina model, are very much limited to what Apple says they can support, by way of the fucking RAM being fucking soldered to the fucking board.

  • SO? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikeiver1 ( 1630021 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:18PM (#53261651)
    This is expected to be this way when the hardware and the OS and the software are all from the same maker. They can and do write final cut to take total advantage of the OS as they have access to the underlying code. The same for the hardware as well. Windows 10 is a decent OS but it is not fancy GUI sitting on top of a highly tuned and targeted BSD distro. All things being equal hardware wise I would very much expect that Final cut pro would be at least 20% faster on the new MacBook pro.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dynedain ( 141758 )

      Actually, it's less about having access to the underlying code (what MS was guilty of with Office), and more that they build to the APIs their OS provides.

      Adobe has to build it's video editing products with an extra abstraction layer because they want the same application code to run on multiple platforms. The same premise applies when building something on GTK/Qt for cross-compatibility with Linux/Win/OSX, or when building something in Unity3D for iOS/Android cross platform support. That extra abstraction

  • News flash (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @08:21PM (#53261661) Homepage

    Software designed for Apple works better on Apple hardware.

    In other news, Microsoft Office works better on Windows than Mac OS.

  • I am waiting for the disclaimer he was paid by apple in some way for the review.
  • Windows programs can also make use if vector instructions and GPUs, "new" cide. So what software in Windows is he referring to? From what year? What machine is it tested on?

  • Benchmark scores for Final Cut Pro:

    Macbook Pro: Greater than zero.
    Windows PC: Zero.

  • Final Cut Pro runs better on Mac than on a PC. News at 11.
  • Even an old Mac from 5 years ago would "tears strips off 'superior spec'd' Windows counterparts in the real world" when running FC since FC doesn't run on Windows at all.

  • A lot of fawning adulation here for a manufacturer that produces machines with many hardware shortcuts that in theory compete with Linux. Bring back the nerd Slashdot and get rid of the SF version, please.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      It's the first useful hardware update Apple has released in about three years* for people who actually use their computers for things beyond facebook and youtube, let them have this, man.

      *Macbook is barely more powerful than an iPad, iPad hasn't had a meaningful update in a couple of years, iPhone has been incremental at best... I can't remember the last time (or if they even sell) they updated their desktop, or what it looks like. The iWatch or whatever it's called got some update but it's not real

  • um specs? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by n3r0.m4dski11z ( 447312 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @09:17PM (#53261915) Homepage Journal

    I actually went to read the article and expected a proper comparison with actual benchmarks. Instead, find a one liner as quoted in the summary. Come here and everyone says the obvious thing i missed with all the abbreviations: Final Cut Pro is a mac application.

    Fuck this apple fanboi and his trolling!

    shame on you slashdot for bothering to link it in the first place! *newsflash!* know-nothing nobody SAYS SOMETHING! stop the presses!

    • Also if you are editing 5K videos. You are running out of disk space really fast with Apple ProRes. A macbook pro with 2TB SSD is going to fill up fast if you are editing anything past a 3 minute video and have multiple camera sources and takes.

  • A lot of his argument is valid to be honest... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10, 2016 @09:18PM (#53261925)

    ...try to buy a Windows PC that has sufficient PCI-Express lanes to run some NVMe SSD storage on top of a high-end video card and some a few USB 3 and ThunderBolt ports.

    Hell, try to BUILD it. The motherboard manufacturers play jenga with individual models and what ports are where, so even though there's a PC Standard it takes hours of research to build a system that doesn't have random bottlenecks if you're going to be doing massive-media manipulation like video editing.

    So does the new MacBook tromp most Windows PCs you can buy or build? You betcha it can, that's no surprise at all. Even those with significantly higher spec 'parts' when the underlying motherboard cripples everything so it can't live up to those specs.

    - WolfWings

    • You get what you pay for. If you buy cheap crap then you will get performance like cheap crap. But with that being said I have looked at the hardware that modern macs run on. That is basically the same standard hardware that a PC runs on.

      • Xeon processors
      • DDR3/DDR4 RAM
      • ATI Graphics Card
      • Intel MB Chips

      There is no "magic" mac hardware. A mac is basically a high end PC with a different OS slapped on top of it.

      Then as true today, you can build a PC running Windows or Linux that will outperform a Mac for

    • WTF are you talking about?

      You do know that the Mac uses exactly the same CPU and chipsets that you can get in equivalent PCs right?
      You do know that it is Intel that sets exactly how many PCI-Express ports are available to that, because it is PART OF THE CPU, right?
      You do know that there is absolutely NO special hardware in Macs, or special setup, EXCEPT a boot and video bios specifically created
      by Apple to block normal drivers from accessing them (and, because of that, meaning that driver updates are much M

    • ...try to buy a Windows PC that has sufficient PCI-Express lanes to run some NVMe SSD storage on top of a high-end video card and some a few USB 3 and ThunderBolt ports.

      Hell, try to BUILD it. The motherboard manufacturers play jenga with individual models and what ports are where, so even though there's a PC Standard it takes hours of research to build a system that doesn't have random bottlenecks if you're going to be doing massive-media manipulation like video editing.

      So does the new MacBook tromp most Windows PCs you can buy or build? You betcha it can, that's no surprise at all. Even those with significantly higher spec 'parts' when the underlying motherboard cripples everything so it can't live up to those specs.

      - WolfWings

      Yawn

      That was true with Haswell in what 2013?! The Broadwell E and Skylake-E and maybe even Skylake has plenty of lanes, USB 3, and Thunderbolt/USB type C. As Apple added these so did Intel for the PC. Infact Intel invented it!! No you did not need a $600 workstation grade Xeon chipset either. A regular Skylake has it all and can do exactly what you described. True a junk HP will not, but neither will the cheapest macs either. Any $150 or up Asus or Gigabyte board or Dell Precision Workstation will all of th

  • Review Fail (Score:5, Informative)

    by Idimmu Xul ( 204345 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @10:03PM (#53262107) Homepage Journal

    Terrible review

    1) "its fast" dur no one said it wasnt
    2) "he has usb-c SSDs" wow go you
    3) "dongles arent a problem as i use the laptop in a desktop setting anyway and will be buying a thunderbolt dock for the desk" AWESOME man thats great that youve removed the laptops killer feature, portability, to accessorise
    4) "everyone that isnt as enlightened as the reviewer sucks" thanks for telling us we arent as good as you because this generation of MBP doesnt work for our needs

    jesus

  • The intervals might be fast enough. But you need a lot of terabytes of storage to do editing with FCP
    X. Those Apple ProRes files takes up 5x the space of the video you import. Then it saves all the renders it has made so if you adjusted fx color, you have how it looked before the change and after. And for every thing you change to a clip a version is saved if I had time to render it in the background.

  • And in other news (Score:3)

    by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @10:49PM (#53262299) Journal

    The MBP with FCP still does not hold a candle to Avid's Media Composer and associated hardware solutions.

  • Apple still doesn't have ANYTHING that even comes close to CUDA support and it's been what, like 10 years? I remember when Apple threw up the brick wall to Nvidia then when they invented CUDA, sued them for not making it run on Apple. Ever since the invention of CUDA, Apple is a joke for editing videos. Open CL is a joke. The lack of hardware controls is a joke. Here, you want an apples to apples comparison (no pun intended)? Take however much that overhyped piece of shit costs then build a custom PC fo

  • Typing this on my low voltage intel windows laptop with 3 4k screens. (Yeah I got usb-3).

    So thats 12k of pixels vs his 5k of pixels on a lower spec'd laptop.
    Window is so efficient!

    Also, not understanding anything and being adulated for it seems to be a thing lately.

  • When it comes to the work I do, graphics to a certain extent and Audio Processing to a large extent, the contemporary Apple OS machines always out-performed the contemporary Windows OS machines at any time since I began ... 1990, if you measure it in terms of work done on the file ... how long does it take to get x amount of final output?

    It's the combination of OS and hardware configuration. You can build a similar Windows box, but it still lags in output over, say, a week. Also note that when Jobs built Pi

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday November 11, 2016 @04:10AM (#53263613)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I find this very hard to believe. The new Razer Blade Pro uses two m2 SSDs in RAID0 to achieve extremely high throughput. Benchmarks will settle the score, but I don't think your statement is going to hold up.
    • And - until APFS comes along - they're still stuck with the godawful latency of HFS+. That's good news for unlocking the hardware's capabilities in the future, but APFS ain't in the wild yet.

  • This says it all about how awesome the Macbook pro and apple are for any use whatsoever, which of course includes video striping:
    https://youtu.be/-XSC_UG5_kU [youtu.be]

    E

  • n/t

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