High-powered computer cuts video production time in half

I lusted for an iMac Pro from the moment I heard about it. According to Apple, “it’s packed with the most powerful graphics and processors ever in a Mac, along with the most advanced storage, memory, and I/O — all behind a breathtaking Retina 5K display.”

Alas, with prices ranging from $4,999 to more than $13,000 for a fully equipped model, iMac Pro is not for everyone.

Though I can’t justify a $5,000-plus iMac Pro for writing columns and books right now, I’ve been doing more long-form video lately (check out my five-hour “Working Smarter” online course and “Drivin’ with Dr. Mac” video series). I wondered just how much time I might save using an iMac Pro in lieu of my 2015 MacBook Pro.

Editing video on my MacBook Pro, even though it has 2.6GHz core Intel i7 processor, 16GB RAM and a big external monitor, is a challenge. It seems I’m always waiting for Final Cut Pro to finish something — importing, rendering or finalizing footage — all of which take longer than I’d like and leave me sitting around.

So, last month I borrowed an iMac Pro from Apple and performed some tests. The iMac Pro I used was the base model ($4,999) with a 3.2GHz core Intel Xeon W processor; 32GB of RAM; a 1TB SSD; and Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics with 8GB of memory.

My first observation out of the box was that the Space Gray finish on all components — the iMac itself, the keyboard, and the mouse — is stunning.

That was when I started calling it “Darth.”

The next thing I noticed was that the Retina 5K display gave me more screen real estate than my two-monitor MacBook Pro setup. I didn’t realize how much I liked having everything on one big screen instead of two medium-sized displays.

The first test was how much time I might save editing video in Final Cut Pro. I first tested importing, transcoding and analyzing a 1.9GB video file. On my MacBook Pro, that took a little more than 11 minutes; on the iMac Pro it took only five minutes and 10 seconds.

So, Darth iMac was more than twice as fast at bringing video into Final Cut Pro. Rendering effects also was roughly twice as fast.

Another bottleneck is exporting finished videos for playback on the internet, so I tested that next. Not surprisingly, the iMac Pro was again more than twice as fast as the MacBook Pro.

Finally, since I often have to use Handbrake to convert finished video from one file format or display size to another, I encoded a 3.28GB movie (.MOV) file, converting it from 1080p to 720p using H.264. The resulting file was less than half the size of the original — 1.42GB — on both Macs. But the process was more than twice as fast on the iMac Pro, which was done in about six minutes. The MacBook Pro didn’t finish for another eight minutes.

If I ever make some money producing videos, my first purchase is going to be an iMac Pro.