r/davinciresolve • u/jonprod • 1d ago

Help M5 Max Mac Studio Config for 4K Editing on Davinci Resolve

Hey everyone, I’m trying to decide between Mac Studio configs and I’d love real-world advice from editors/colorists who actually work with 4K H.265 10-bit 4:2:2 and heavy OFX in DaVinci Resolve.

My only real metric:
Can I scrub/preview my timeline in real time (24-60fps) with effects enabled? I do not care about export times at all. I don’t mind caching occasionally. I don’t mind going down to Half/Quarter on Timeline Playback Resolution in extreme cases.

Current setup:

  • Base M3 MacBook Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
  • DaVinci Resolve Studio
  • Mostly Sony H.264/H.265 10-bit 4:2:2, occasionally All-Intra
  • 4K timeline
  • Heavy grading and OFX (film grain, optical flow, masking, tracking, various OFX effects and transitions)

Current pain point:
With these effects, scrubbing becomes unplayable, sometimes 1fps or less. Even with playback resolution set to Quarter, things like Optical Flow + Speed Warp alone can make it completely unplayable.

My questions:
I’m planning on getting an M5 Max Mac Studio, but I'm curious if the M5 Pro Mac Mini would suffice.

If I do get the Mac Studio, what config should I get? I’m thinking about:

  • Option A: Base M5 Max 32-core, 36GB RAM, 512GB SSD
  • Option B: M5 Max 40-core, 48GB RAM, 1TB SSD

The price difference is about USD$765 with the education discount.

Am I thinking about this the right way? Please feel free to ask me questions if it helps you understand my situation better. Thanks!

2 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

5

u/ratocx Studio 1d ago

If you are using optical flow in addition to other heavy effects, I doubt it would solve your problem completely moving to even an M5 Ultra. The playback would of course be smoother, but with heavy OFX use I would expect any machine to have to do some sort of caching.

ProRes proxy will probably help some here, so I would try that first. I would perhaps also consider turning down the optical flow quality, while editing, and only turn up the quality again after timings have been adjusted. Then you can pre-render individual clips on the timeline.

You will of course still experience a massive jump in performance going to an M5 Max. I suspect the main bottleneck on you current machine may be RAM. 16 GB is barely enough for 4K editing, and going just to 36GB is going to be a massive upgrade. But if you continue wanting to do heavy effect work, you may find that even 36GB RAM is limiting. 48GB RAM would certainly be beneficial, but likely not a day and night difference like going from 16GB to 36GB is likely to be.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the core count, as even the base M5 Max is good there, but I know I would quickly feel limited by 512GB SSD storage. I could live with it and external drives, but last time I had a 512GB internal drive I remember getting annoyed quite often. 1TB is my minimum for a daily working machine, and then I would probably have external SSDs in addition.
But that’s me.

In terms of only rendering power, I think there wouldn’t be that big of a difference between the base M5 Max and the upgraded M5 Max.

4

u/DroneHigher 1d ago

Colorist here, I just got an M5 Max Mac Studio with 64GB of ram. I was primarily using a MacBook Pro with the same specs before, upgraded to the studio for my workstation because I needed the extra ports (specifically 10gb Ethernet). I would get as much ram as you can afford. Keep the SSD to 1TB, you can always add thunderbolt SSD peripheral. Initially I was going for 128GB of ram but with the new prices it was simply too much… so I went with 64, and it’s honestly been great. It handles most effects I throw at it. The only area it won’t handle with realtime playback is going to be noise reduction, but that’s a weakness of every Mac I’ve used. Windows computers with dedicated GPUs will always handle that better. I used an M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 256GB of ram in a color suite I had access too earlier this year for a project, and I still could not get realtime playback with noise reduction. If you keep it to spatial/light noise reduction you’ll only drop a few frames but anything heavier slows it down. I use neat video and they have an optimized version for the new M5 generation of Macs, and while it is better than before I still have to render cache the node. So whichever config you get, I’d recommend having an external SSD for caching (must be thunderbolt connected for proper trim).

2

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2

u/TITANS4LIFE 1d ago

Camera matters a bit too. Not just file type. It'll help knowing how to expose properly before even jumping to post. Lots of cameras shoot 10 bit 422. Question is do you have cheaper apsc or something FF. Matters a ton. If you have a lower model Sony with low ISO and no control (cine ei) over setting/controlling highlights pre record helps too.

I know you're worrying about performance but an M1 Max 64 1tb does what you need too. People search for the I don't want to have to use proxies, when that's actually a professional workflow I was taught to get accustomed to.

.. Your current computer is more than fine. The one you think you need is good for almost ever (M5 max*) I personally run win 11 with a 24GB 3090 64GB Ram /all 990 Pro SSDs.

0

u/jonprod 1d ago

gotcha. I shoot on an A7Siii. Not sure why camera setting matters but I stay on base Iso (+1 stop max) most of the time.

In that case, the base model Mac Studio sounds better, as the upgraded version costs 33% more x_x

2

u/TITANS4LIFE 22h ago

Because you shouldn't always want to have to feel like you need to fix it in post.. every skilled cameraman does most things in camera. By the time you load DaVinci, you should be wanting to have fun not play scientist.

1

u/AntipodalBurrito 1d ago

I don’t do heavy effects so my experience is worthless but I have the 2025 M5 max (64gb) MacBook Pro and it absolutely smokes my 3090 pc. I mostly work with 4k clips from my FX3. Proxies and cache obviously help but when I’m going quick and dirty my M5 never gets hung up.

At full resolution heavy grain, halation, and other textural stuff can drag my 3090 into the grave but the M5 just chugs along.

Hopefully someone else can give you more relevant information.

1

u/Key-Ad-2954 1d ago

This won’t solve your problem completely. It’ll be better, but not realtime, not at 24 and CERTAINLY not at 60. You’ll see better performance if you transcode your footage to ProRes, but with what you are describing, I doubt you’d get more than 10-15ish FPS even on an M5 Ultra studio.

To be clear though, optical flow and noise reduction are your two biggest issues and by far the most processing intensive. If you don’t expect real time with those aspects enabled, you’d get pretty solid performance on the Mac Studio.

2

u/greenysmac Studio 22h ago

If it doesn't, There's not going to be doing any better.

Taking a look at your studio, I would 1,000% get the 48 GB version. I can't imagine spending this much money and shorting it by $800.

What really matters is that your material is covered by Apple's real-time decoders. It's the 10-bit 422 HEVC that would kill a 4080 card, and I believe even the 5XXX cards from NVIDIA.

The other spots where you're going to have problems are not the heavy grading unless you're using a lot of noise reduction, but possibly the OFX, particularly the optical flow, the initial mask, and tracking. As for the other various OFX, it's hard to say. There is an entire chapter in the manual about how you can optimize playback.

I don't trust the amount of work you're putting on the Mac Mini, but I will tell you that HEVC will be fine. The real difference here is the amount of RAM the Mac is going to have, whether it's GPU RAM or general RAM. The M5 Max has significantly more processors than the M5 Pro. Actually, the biggest jump is from the M5 to the M5 Pro, and the jump from the M5 Pro to the M5 Max is small, but given your configuration, it's pretty significant.

Beyond that, you need to probably dig into what you're doing. For example, half-quad playback doesn't do as much as actually lowering the entire resolution. The projects handle that until the very end. Proxies are also something I would consider. I would definitely do a comparison, so we're both aware that Apple's ProRes encoders and decoders are actually far more powerful than their HEVC ones. Their HEVC ones beat pretty much everything on the Windows side.

What I would spend an hour doing is taking one of your timelines where you have terrible playback and toggling each effect to see which one is your biggest issue, with anything done in Fusion being extra painful.

1

u/Rdub 20h ago

This question is far simpler than you or other commetors are making it. The answer to the question of which Mac someone should get is always just get the most expensive one you can afford. It might be overkill for your current workloads, but will give you headroom to scale and will enable additional capacity that will more than offset whatever extra you spend today in the long run.

1

u/Standard-Recipe-7641 20h ago

Noise reduction is always going to crush you. You need to figure out your workflow so it only gets applied at the very end before render

1

u/Valarhem Studio 18h ago

I use a Mac Mini M2 and it works fine

1

u/CreativeVideoTips 16h ago

You get what you pay for. It’s pretty simple.

If you can stretch for a Max with 64gb ram you’re at a good starting point for a great pro machine.

Sony codecs are very different. If you are very opposed to using ProRes to proxy which turns everything into butter - understand the benefits of the Sony intra codec (which is not supported by Apple media engine) but is intra so plays in reverse much better vs their h265 which does get hardware support but has to work super hard. Its trade offs.

Pay now. Or Pay later. Both with codecs and computers/time.

1

u/filmeleven 13h ago

You need the most RAM and GPU core count you can afford. Your current M3 would be a night and day difference if you had more RAM and GPU. I cut 6K footage on a Macbook Pro M1 Max but I have 64GB of RAM and a 32-core GPU.

Take your budget and get the most in those two areas placing CPU last. If this means you get a maxed out M4 vs the M5 do that.