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New Mac Pro editing XAVC footage
My current old Mac Pro (trash can) has finally died. I edit in FCPX and mainly work with XAVC footage. I was planning on upgrading to a new Mac Pro, but have been advised by a much more techie friend than me that the processors in the new Mac Pro are really bad at working with H.264 footage. Is this right? *How* bad are they?
How on earth is it possible that Apple’s most powerful computer will be bad at editing one of the most common codecs in it’s native edit software??
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3 Replies
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There are several variants of XAVC. I’ve edited a lot of 4k XAVC-S, which internally is 8-bit 4:2:0 H.264. Both that and XAVC-L are sluggish to edit on most NLEs on almost any Mac.
The statement about the processors on the new Mac Pro is not really correct. They are simply Xeon CPUs, the same as in other high-end workstations. It’s true Xeon does not have Quick Sync video acceleration, but on the Mac Pro this is handled by Apple’s T2 chip. My iMac Pro has a previous version of that chip and it handles some H.264 versions OK, but it could be better.
The Afterburner card on the new Mac Pro does nothing for H.264 or any Long GOP codec. It only handles *decode* (not encode) of ProRes and ProRes RAW — that’s it. However the T2 chip makes the new Mac Pro much faster on some H.264 variants than any previous Mac Pro.
H.264 is not a single codec, but rather a family which includes many different internal formats. There is a general industry problem not unique to Apple whereby camera developers introduce new codec variants, hardware video accelerators don’t always work as desired, and there is a several-year lag time while both hardware accelerators and applications catch up.
Current video accelerators are not like a GPU, whereby if the app uses CUDA or OpenCL it works for a broad variety of cases. E.g, there’s no such thing as generic “H.264 video accelerator”. The accelerator typically can only handle a narrow set of encoding cases — certain GOP lengths, certain bit depths, certain chroma sampling, certain frame rates, certain frame sizes. Any deviation from those will cause the app to revert to software decode/encode.
Sometimes the hardware capability exists but there is lag at the applications level. E.g, Quick Sync was released in 2011 but Premiere Pro didn’t use it for years. Recently Blackmagic updated DaVinci Resolve to better handle some 10-bit 4:2:2 All-Intra codecs on Mac, but FCPX is still sluggish on the same machine.
Theoretically the upcoming new Apple Silicon Macs could have improved video hardware acceleration. More agile refinement of these accelerators to address changing camera codecs could also be possible. By contrast Intel has refused to put Quick Sync on Xeon.
The new 2020 iMac 27 is pretty fast. If you want a fast machine to use in the interim, consider that.
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Joe, thanks so much for such a detailed and helpful reply. I’m very grateful!
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I for one would not let a codec like h264 determine my computer purchase.
It’s not like relying on Nvidia cards for OpenGL due to 3D software specs.
My 2019 Mac Pro is doing quite well working with Canon/Panasonic formats.
Even better with R3D but I’ve never had issues with that codec from my experience.
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