How to improve performance with hardware?
Answered
I am working with RAW files and I want better performance on my Mac Mini. I plan on upgrading to a new Mac Book Pro M1Max or similar in the coming months. I have two questions.
Firstly, before I upgrade, is there anything that I can do to speed up performance? I have a TB3 enclosure I could get an NVMe SSD for. If I made this drive my cache and scratch drive, would that help performance?
Secondly, what hardware should I be looking to configure my new Mac Book with, in order to get he best performance from On1 Raw?
Where I am noticing the slowness is in brushing in a mask on an adjustment layer - the brush is glitchy and laggy and jitters about the screen as I paint. As well as switching between images. Even when I am switching back and forth between just 5 images. I would have thought these would all get saved to the scratch/cache and would load quickly. Once the images loads, it takes a while for the adjustments and effects panels to load as well.
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Yes, moving the PerfectBrowseCache and the Scratch space to an NVMe SSD will help your performance. Since I added my SSD I very rarely see any more stuttering while brushing. Since I got my M1 mini it has only happened once and that was an image with a very large memory need—multiple layers with multiple effects on each layer, lots of masks, etc. I was able to work past it by lowering the Preferences > System > Performance > Video Card Strength slider to about the half way point.
With the M1s there really isn't much hardware configuration you have control over — RAM and SSD size is all. Get as much RAM as you can afford and as large an SSD as you need leaving room for growth.
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Thanks Brian,
Why does lowering the Video Card Strength improve performance? That seems counter intuitive.
The Perfect browse cash is only 10Gb, so I'm happy to just put that on my System drive, which, on the MacMini is an NVMe SSD, so that should improve performance, but there is no indication of how big the Scratch folder will be? And I only have a 512Gb system drive so I am hesitant to make this the "default" location, as if it gets very big, it will take up too much of my system drive. I assume this is where it is storing the folder on "default".
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The stuttering comes from the GPU not being able to keep up with all that's being demanded of it. Lowering the slider's setting tells the program to push it less so it doesn't have as much to do. I don't know the specifics of it, except that the GPU is involved in tracking the brush strokes. The less rendering it has to do the more time it has to track the brush location.
The Fast Panning and Fast Preview options can also help and they work on the same principle. When they are turned on the preview isn't rendered to full detail and will look a little fuzzy when panning the image at larger views than will fit in the window or when brushing.
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Cool, thanks for the info Brian.
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Paul,
You might want to watch a few of the videos on the ArtIsRight channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ArtIsRight/videos.
Art is a certified expert with Benq monitors and did several videos about how the different M1 Pro and Max SOCs perform with different configs running both LrC and C1P. Those two apps depend to different degrees on using CPUs vs GPUs. But as remember, you can't go too far wrong with M1 Max with 24GPU cores and 32GB of memory. More GPUs and memory are nice to have, but not a good value. Internal SSD should be 1TB so there plenty of space for MacOS, apps, caches, ...etc. I plan to replace my M1 Mini with the Pro Mini which should be announced in March. I will likely get it with M1 Max with 24GPU cores, 32GB of memory, and 1TB internal SSD. I will reuse my data storage (4TB RAID 0 made from two 2TB SSDs connected via TB3) and my Time Machine backup drive (8TB Drive HDD connected via TB3).
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Thanks Michael Anderson
I'm either getting the Mac Mini M1Max or the Mac Book. Depends how much cheaper the Mini is when it comes out.
I mostly shoot and edit video, so I'll be getting 64Gb or maybe ever 128, if it's available, for Davinici Resolve fusion as it's mega RAM hungry and I hate waiting for renders/caching!
I have set the preferences as you've described, and I have the most powerful current Mac Mini, so I can only assume I have as fast a machine as yours, or faster, and yet I still get horrible lagging when brushing. Something you claim to never get. Could it be that it's to do with the location of the files? They are on a 5 Disc RAID array DAS connected by TB3. I get read speeds of about 420mb/s
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It shouldn't have anything to do with where the images are stored. That would only affect the amount of time it takes to read the raw file so you can start editing. While editing it should be either in RAM or maybe a portion spooled off to the program's scratch.
I'm running the 1st gen M1 Mini with a 2TB SSD and 16GB of RAM. My photos are stored on an SSD connected through an OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock. I have a 128GB SSD connected via Thunderbolt 3 directly to the mini. I use a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet also connected to the dock.
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Paul,
I understand. For me it will not be a Macbook because you can get more in a Mini than a laptop for the same cost. Mini's don't have screens, keyboards, trackpads, or have to worry about battery life and heat. We use our M1 iPads on the road. Serious editing is done on the desktop. I get around 850mbs write speed and 1700mbs read speed from my RAID 0.
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I have had the lagging loacal adjustment problem on several macbook pros now.
Lagging, studdering and unprecise to the point of useless to be mention it all.
My macbook is a M1 Pro with 32gb memory - the problem remains!
Mouse is a Logitech MX Anywhere 3 - and the one before the version 2 = same problem
Latest updates and drivers (if needed) are installed. System is latest monterey.
All brushwork is unprecise and lagging - local adjustment is the worst though
This behaviour have made me leave ON1 several times, to come back and try every 6 months.
- so i sadly cant choose it as my main editor
This problem goes far back - hope they will fix it0
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