I need advice on which MacBook Pro I should Buy for DaVinci Resolve Editing.

reubenjodie wrote:

Slightly in the dark on this if I am honest, I am a videographer who knows how to edit- the technical stuff might not be my most polished knowledge so excuse me if I should silly here but I store all of my files and videos, photos and whatever on a Sandisk external sd card which I dont have a reader for so I use the camera which is plugged into the laptop via a data cable which I then take the files and import to DaVinci- is this what you mean and do you think this may be the source of my issues?

SD-family cards and readers vary greatly in the speeds that they support.

SD Association – Speed Class

Even a V90 card (90 MB/s = 0.720 Gbps) is much slower than USB 3.0 (5.0 Gbps before overhead), let alone USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10.0 Gbps before overhead). A V90 card may be fast enough to record video clips in real time while it's installed in your camera, but if you are editing large video files, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 SSD, Thunderbolt 3 SSD, or USB4 40 Gbps SSD may be more suitable.

Many NVMe SSDs which attach via these interfaces are small. I have a Crucial X9 Pro that holds 4 TB, but that is the size of a credit card with the thickness of an iPhone. Some fast NVMe SSDs from other vendors look a bit like oversized USB flash drives. I would think that any of these would be easier to use for storage than a camera. The camera arrangement will be limited not only by the speed of the SD-family card, but by the speed of the camera's USB interface – do you know if your camera even supports USB 3.0?

reubenjodie wrote:

I store all of my files and videos, photos and whatever on a Sandisk external sd card which I dont have a reader for so I use the camera which is plugged into the laptop via a data cable which I then take the files and import to DaVinci-

is this what you mean and do you think this may be the source of my issues?

Basically, yes ... and if you do the same on an M5 Mac it won't be any different. The data transfer speed from your camera to your Mac is the limiting factor. (BTW, what camera is it?)

@Servant of Cats has explained things about SD cards and USB speeds, so I won't duplicate that here.

Given what you have told us so far, I suggest getting a decent external SSD that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) or better still USB 4 (40Gbps). Copy your clips from your camera to the SSD then use the clips on the SSD with Davinci Resolve. You should find that your M2 MBAir is all of a sudden much more responsive. (And hopefully you already have 16GB RAM in your MBAir.)

If you're doing that much video editing, at present an M4Pro MacBookPro or Mac mini would be a better choice for your stated use than the new M5. Or wait until an M5 Pro comes out. And, regarding configuration for video editing I strongly suggest at least 1TB SSD & at least 24GB RAM. You cannot upgrade it later.

reubenjodie wrote:

I experience constant lags and stutters and glitches in the timeline and I have to export the video to actually see what the edit looks like.

I store everything externally

What external drive(s) are you using (make, model, capacity & free space)

... and how are they connected to your MBAir M2?

If you are using your external drives for your source clips, proxies, etc., the drives could be the source of your "constant lags and stutters and glitches" even more if they are HDDs not SSDs.

reubenjodie wrote:

Slightly in the dark on this if I am honest, I am a videographer who knows how to edit- the technical stuff might not be my most polished knowledge so excuse me if I should silly here

That is Ok, I don't know that much about video editing, but must support some Macs in my organization that are used for video editing.

but I store all of my files and videos, photos and whatever on a Sandisk external sd card which I dont have a reader for so I use the camera which is plugged into the laptop via a data cable which I then take the files and import to DaVinci- is this what you mean and do you think this may be the source of my issues?

That could indeed be the bottle neck if the files remain on the SD Card while you are editing a video. Does DaVinci Resolve actually have an import option where the source files are transferred from external media to the internal media?

I had to troubleshoot DaVinci Resolve issues last year on one of my organization's Macs. Unfortunately I never considered the source of the files being an issue while I was troubleshooting since I had discovered a couple of other possible issues.

IIRC, DaVinci Resolve tends to keep the source files at their default locations & only links to those files in the various projects. I only had to reference source files that had already been transferred to the Mac's internal SSD so I never had the need to start with files located on a camera or SD card. Maybe this is why I didn't actually encounter any performance issues during my troubleshooting....or it may have been my lack of familiarity with DaVinci Resolve.

I will tell you one thing:

I know my device is just a MacBook Air, and as such not designed to handle such heavy workloads.

Also, one could argue that DaVinci Resolve is better optimized for macOS than LR. But in Adobe Lightroom, with not even that advanced editing, my MacBook will use all of its 24 GB RAM and still quite some swap. So, if you plan to purchase a device for serious video-/photo-editing, please consider getting 32GB RAM. It'll pay off.

So in short, should I buy the new M5 MacBook Pro with 512ssd and 16gb ram or should I extend my budget for better and go with a 512gb ssd and a higher 24 or more Ram

The latter.

Get more storage too. You are proposing to edit 4k video and 512 GB is not very much these days.

Nor for that matter is 4k video. Decide the likelihood of a need to edit 5k or even 8k video over the life of that Mac — typically seven years or so.

None of the Macs I have purchased over the last decade have been specified with less than 1 TB, and they are not used to edit 4k video.

I recommend starting here: Compare MacBook Pro Models - Apple

adding to what John Galt said about boot SSD drive size:

One feature that STRONGLY limits video playback speed is drive speed. if you play your video from a Rotating Magnetic drive, by todays standards of Video playback, those are incredibly S-L-O-W.

a free Utility, Black Magic Disk Speed Test, can show a table of what resolution(s) of Video can be played back based on drive speed. You should download it and run it on each of your general storage drives -- it can be an eye-opener.

Here is a sample output:

[Edited by Moderator]

adding to what Servant of Cats posted about M5 (plain) available now:

Historically, the M-series MAX chips have featured TWO sets of video encode engines, two sets of ProRes encode and decode engines. (plain and pro may feature one)

That MAX might be the ideal editing system to be looking at in the long long run.

reubenjodie wrote:

I am very on the go so this might not be the best decision but do you think the Mac mini could be transported easily without much hassle? If it is a big deal to carry it around the place with a portable monitor I would rather spend more- Thanks so much for the reply!

If you're on the go all the time, it makes more sense to get a MacBook Pro. Then optionally add a dock, full-size keyboard, mouse, and large monitor for use when at home.

Seems like yesterday editing 4k video was only for high end workstations; now it's commonplace. It is not at all unreasonable to expect 8k will be commonplace well within the expected life of your Mac.

Compare this excerpt from Buy 16-inch MacBook Pro - Apple:

... with the corresponding screenshot from Buy 15-inch MacBook Air - Apple:

While you can certainly edit 4k video with the Air, only the MBP makes specific references to editing 8k video.

It's easy for me to spend your money, but no one ever wishes they bought less storage, or less memory.

reubenjodie wrote:

I use a Lumix S5 camera btw

Panasonic – Lumix S5 Full Frame Mirrorless Camera Body

If you click on the link for full specifications, it appears that recording 6K video at 30p or less is supported. Most of the video modes store 100 Mbps (12.5 MBps) to 200 Mbps (25 MBps). Thus even a video that is 1 minute long would take 750 MB to 1.5 GB.

The camera has a USB-C (SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps) port, with a maximum transfer rate of 1.25 GBps (aka 1250 MBps) before overhead. (Which is good – they didn't stick you with a USB 2.0 port!)

As for cards, the camera accepts

"SD Memory Card / SDHC Memory Card* / SDXC Memory Card*

*Compatible with UHS-I/UHS-II UHS Speed Class 3 standard SDHC/SDXC Memory Cards and UHS-II Video

Speed Class 90 standard SDXC Memory Cards."

UHS-II allows for transfers of up to "156 MB/s full duplex, 312 MB/s half duplex", but I don't know if cards rated for V90 (90 MB/s write speed) would actually deliver that sort of read performance, especially when the card reader is a camera rather than a dedicated high-speed card reader attached to a computer.

SD Association – Bus Speed (Default Speed/High Speed/UHS/SD Express)

If you are working with video files that take up many GB, you're going to want to get those files off cards, and onto much faster SSDs.

reubenjodie wrote:

I also will not be able to go for any higher spec regarding the chip so the standard M5 Pro will be what I am ideally looking at and if I definitely should and would regret not getting a higher RAM I will do so. So in short, should I buy the new M5 MacBook Pro with 512ssd and 16gb ram or should I extend my budget for better and go with a 512gb ssd and a higher 24 or more Ram

Just so you are aware … the M5 MacBook Pro that is out now uses a plain M5 chip, not a M5 Pro chip or M5 Max chip. The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips aren't out yet.

one more thought on choice of MacBook <anything> for Video Editing.

When you buy a MacBook Pro or Air, you pay dearly for extreme light weight, that lovely built-in display, and the capability to run on batteries.

if you do not need the ability to run on batteries, and you need a larger display than the built-in display, your money goes MUCH farther in buying a Desktop system, such as a Mac mini or Mac Studio.