m1 running HD for post, 32 or 64gb ram?

[analog orange]

Buying a Mac Studio. Do I need 64gb of ram? Will be running it exclusively on PT HD doing post in 5.1

Current Intel Mac has 64gb.

Thanks!

[Darryl Ramm]

Nobody here can say for sure if you *need* it. And it's hard to quickly even tell how much memory your current systems needs to run your current workloads, well not without doing some tests. (unless you have current performance problems that are memory related... then you know you need more but I assume you would say if so).

But not knowing if you *need* something is different from what makes sense to buy. And that would be 64GB. Hell yes. I'd want more but I'll take as much as I can get.

Y'all can't upgrade memory, ever, so get it now.

Don't listen to the confused folks saying you need less memory on Apple Silicon Systems, you should assume you need about the same (maybe more while using Rosetta). Some Apple Silicon Systems get away with less memory because they page memory so fast to SSD. Y'all don't want to be doing that with Pseudo real time/latency sensitive software like Pro Tools. And some of those kiddies claiming all that are now worried about the internal SSD drives they have worn our with all that paging I/O (orders of magnitude more writes than any normal disk use).

And Pro Tools and plugin are only going to keep consuming more memory.

Kinda obvious what the choice should be.

And at least for me I'd be trying to max out the internal SSD(s) and run sessions from there. You cannot get any faster or likely more reliable storage. No idea how you would want to handle video. If there was not too much I'd be putting it there as well. Maybe Studio SSDs will be upgradeable in future, but they are not today, so I'd go heavy there as well because of that.

[analog orange]

I hadn't thought about the caching on the ssd wearing it out more. 64gb it is. Good thinking. Planning on 2tb minimum internal. They are stupid fast and the bigger built in ssd the faster the read write. Thanks again.

[JFreak]

To put this in perspective... Post work was perfectly okay 15 years ago with 48 gigs on intel. They say (and my tests before apple silicon native software) concludes that a gig of system-on-chip memory counts as two gigs on intels, and assuming you haven't bought crazy hungry plugins in the last 15 years, even 24 gig laptop would be fine.

Of course, your workflow and need for gazillion video tracks for example may have changed the whole ballgame. But just saying "post work" -- in my opinion you can do it with a fully loaded m2 air.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by JFreak

To put this in perspective... Post work was perfectly okay 15 years ago with 48 gigs on intel. They say (and my tests before apple silicon native software) concludes that a gig of system-on-chip memory counts as two gigs on intels, and assuming you haven't nought crazy hungry plugins in the last 15 years, even 24 gig laptop would be fine.

No. Who is this magical they? Can you explain the tests you have done that show this. If you could explain how you factored in the demand paging, and memory compression behavior, on both systems that would be great. And where this reduced memory need comes from if it is not just paging out to SSD? And what wear is there on that SSD?

[JFreak]

Traffic between CPU and RAM is so much faster, that as processor gets jobs done faster, purges memory, fetches new batch of data for processing, is roughly double compared to "external" memory and different levels of caching.

This of course only applies to processor intensive workload (a.k.a. post work) and we still cannot beat the laws of physics: if a single VI require -say- 16 GB of data loaded into memory, then it is just that.

EDIT: regarding SSD wear (caused by swap) it is neglible. I only boot my computer when the kernel is updated (as in macOS point updates) and since latest reboot max swap has been 25 megabytes. Before that it was almost 50 megabytes. But that kind of paging activity wears SSD way less than updating PT software every time new version comes available.

[its2loud]

Originally Posted by analog orange

Buying a Mac Studio. Do I need 64gb of ram? Will be running it exclusively on PT HD doing post in 5.1

Current Intel Mac has 64gb.

Thanks!

Open up a large session on your Intel machine. Go into System Monitor and under Memory tab take a look at how much RAM Pro Tools and Pro Tools Video Engine are using.

Then take a look at the bottom of the window at remaining RAM available for everything running on your machine with that session open.

Remember, it’s not just Pro Tools using RAM. Just about every single process and program uses it and that is something very important to consider.

On my M1 Mac Mini, Pro Tools, in total, chews up about half or more of my 16GB of RAM. 4-5GB of that is for the video engine alone.

[creativecontrol]

Absolutely, do the analysis of your memory usage... but then order 64GB of RAM for your Mac Studio.

:)



Jeff

[its2loud]

Ha ha ha! Touché!

[smurfyou]

Avid Video Engine consistently eats up 3-4 GB just by launching.

When it comes to post, go for the most