Today's Apple event bought an all-new M1 Max or M1 Ultra powered Mac Studio and a 27-inch 5K Retina Studio Display.
Today's Apple presentation was full of new products, the iPad Air, updated iPhone SE, new green iPhone 13s, but the two stand-out products for us were the new form factor Mac Studio and the new 27-inch 5K Retina Studio Display.
We knew something good was coming as Apple went into great depth about the new Apple Silicon M1 Ultra chip that powers the beefier of the Mac Studio models. The M1 Ultra is two M1 Max chips connected together using fast UltraFusion technology. This offers stunning performance without the need for software to be written for multiple chips. (How many can you hook together???)
Let's start by posting the hour-long presentation. Good to see that Final Cut Pro was shown a few times, Motion got a look-in as well as the new iPad version of iMovie with a new storyboard feature that will be released in March.
The star of the show was obviously the new Mac Studio. Designed to sit between the Mac Mini and Mac Pro for desktop users, we like the new form factor. Not only does this fit under the new display nicely, we also bet you can get two of them in a 19" rack. Both machines are 19.7 cm square and 9.5 cm tall. The M1 Max version is 2.7kg and the M1 Ultra nearly a kilogram heavier at 3.6 kg.
There are two USB-C ports on the front, the M1 Max supports 10Gb/s USB 3, and on M1 Ultra supports 40Gb/s Thunderbolt 4. There is also an SDXC card slot (UHS‑II).
The Mac Studio is powered by either the M1 Max or M1 Ultra SOC. The latter consisting of 114 billion transistors, the most ever in a personal computer chip. Apple are saying that a Mac Studio with M1 Ultra can play back 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video. Pretty impressive if you have fast enough storage to keep up.
On the back, Mac Studio includes four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port (4K resolution at 60Hz) and a pro audio jack for high-impedance headphones or external amplified speakers.
Just take a look a the performance figures. there are going to be a lot of disgruntled Mac Pro owners that see a less expensive machine giving better performance. In the presention, Apple did mention that the Mac Pro would be the last machine to be updated with Apple Silicon. Let's hope a new Apple Silicon motherboard for the existing Mac Pro will be an option rather than having to buy a whole new machine!
Mac Studio Powered by M1 Max Enables:
- Up to 2.5x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.
- Up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon processor.
- Up to 3.4x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac, and over 3x faster than Mac Pro with its most popular graphics card.
- Up to 7.5x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 3.7x faster than 16-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.
Mac Studio Powered by M1 Ultra Enables:
- Up to 3.8x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.
- Up to 90 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with 16-core Xeon processor.
- Up to 60 percent faster CPU performance than 28-core Mac Pro.
- Up to 4.5x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 80 percent faster than the fastest Mac graphics card available today.
- Up to 12x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 5.6x faster than 28-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.
It will be interesting to see some real-life performance stats. As a sidenote, all the tests were done with a pre-release version of Final Cut pro 10.6.2.
Both machines can be specified with up to 8TB SSD, the M1 Ultra can go to 128 GB of unified memory, but the M1 max version only allows for a maximum of 64GB.
The new 27 inch Studio Display is the perfect partner for the Mac Studio. It features a 27-inch 5120x2880 resolution at 218 pixels per inch 5K Retina screen with over 14.7 million pixels. Slightly disappointed that it only reaches 600 nits of brightness considering the stunning 1600 output of the new MacBook Pros and its bigger XDR brother. No mention of available refresh rates.
The new Studio Display running Final Cut Pro from a Mac mini
It is rammed with speakers though and supports Dolby Atmos, which on the basis of how good the MacBook Pro is, this should sound superb. There's also a studio-quality three-mic array with high signal-to-noise ratio and directional beamforming.
Gone is the dreaded 720p camera, the screen contains a 12MP Ultra Wide camera with 122° field of view that supports Centre Stage.
On the back it has three USB-C ports that deliver speeds up to 10Gb/s and a Thunderbolt 3 port that has 96W host charging. Which means you can have one cable to the display from your MacBook Pro.
The Studio Display is $1599, there are some options. The non-reflective nano-texture glass from there XDR is available for an extra $300 along with a $400 tilt and height adjustable stand and no cost VESA mount option.
Although a Thunderbolt cable is provided with the display, you'll need a few more peripherals for the Mac Studio/Studio Display combo.
Also announced are a new $199 silver-and-black colour option for Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, $149 Magic Trackpad, and $99 Magic Mouse.
Let's hope we get our hands on one of each soon!
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
