Premiere Pro Beta on Apple M1: The results are in
Premiere Pro Beta on Apple M1 Macbook Pro.
Premiere Pro performance on Apple M1 was already impressive when we first released the public Beta last December. As the latest Pfeiffer Report benchmark results show, it has only gotten better. From first launch to final exports, everything is faster — on average 77 percent faster than comparable Intel-based systems — and editing is buttery smooth.
With a longstanding commitment to leveraging the latest hardware advances, the Premiere Pro Beta digs deep into the new Apple architecture, allowing editors and creators to tackle big projects on Macs with the new M1 chip that rival the performance of high-end workstations. Pfeiffer’s testing shows marked improvements for importing, playback, and exports. For example, XAVC S 4K footage imported 187 percent faster and encoding to ProRes 422 was 129 percent faster. A demanding, highly compressed format like iPhone 4K footage at 60 fps plays smoothly on the Premiere Pro timeline.
Other performance highlights:
- Launch 50 percent faster
- Open projects 77 percent faster
- Save projects 168 percent faster
- Gradient wipe effect 90 percent faster
- Lens Flare effect 66 percent faster
Adobe Sensei meets Apple Neural Engine
By tapping into different parts of the Apple M1 chipset, the Premiere Pro Beta shines in other areas as well. Optimizing our Adobe Sensei AI and ML features for the Apple Neural Engine provides next-level performance gains. For example, Scene Edit Detection, powered by Adobe Sensei, is at least 430 percent faster on an Apple M1 13” MacBook Pro than an Intel-powered system with similar specifications. Fine-tuning Premiere Pro for the M1’s Unified Memory improves overall efficiency of the application, and our own testing shows significantly longer battery life.
Scene Edit Detection, powered by Adobe Sensei, is at least 430 percent faster on an Apple M1.
What was tested
The Pfeiffer Report compared the Premiere Pro Beta on 13” MacBook Pros with 2TB SSD hard drives. The M1 systems had the Apple M1 chipset with 8-core CPUs and GPUs and 16GB of Unified Memory. The Intel-based systems had 2.0 GHz quad-core CPUs and 16GB on onboard memory.
The tests included XAVC 4K media at 25, 50, and 100p, and XAVC S-I 4K 50p, ProRes 422, and iPhone 12 (HEIC) 4K footage. For more detailed information M1 benchmark testing and results, see the full Pfeiffer Report here.
Note: for H.264 and HEVC, encoding performance gains were marginal, thanks to our existing optimizations for Intel Quick Sync. But even here<u>,</u> Premiere Pro on the Apple M1 held a slight edge.
Try it out
Premiere Pro with native support for Apple M1 is coming soon, but you can try it right now in Beta. Visit the Premiere Pro Beta forums for more information and download the Premiere Pro Beta with native support for Apple M1 today.