Some questions about the video encoding engines in the M4 Max.

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Some questions about the video encoding engines in the M4 Max.

A few of questions about the video encoding engines in the M4 Max. First, are specific codecs burned into the engines (x.264. HEVC, etc)? Second, given that there are two engines, does that mean a single encoding job is split between the two engines? Or does that mean that there can be two simultaneous encoding jobs running? Finally, is there any way to monitor the engines? Activity Monitor shows CPU and GPU, but not encoding engines.

Mac Studio, macOS 15.3

Posted on Mar 24, 2025 05:56 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 24, 2025 07:37 PM in response to JohnBoebinger

This is what Apple says in the Technical Specifications for the M4 Max Mac Studio, and M4 Max MacBook Pros.

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Hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW
Video decode engine
Two video encode engines
Two ProRes encode and decode engines
AV1 decode

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I would not make the assumption that the video encoding/decoding engines are suitable for accelerating other codecs. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. With specialized computing engines, you often trade off general-purpose flexibility for speed.

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Some questions about the video encoding engines in the M4 Max.

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