(probably) Dumb question from a video editing newbie (M1 Pro related)

[ToolBoy]

So, I'll admit to limited knowledge of professional type video work, but I'm a little confused by what I'm seeing here.

For a variety of other reasons, I bought a new 14" MacBook Pro to replace my MBA with the thought that I could among other things also use it to organize, edit, and transcode my hundreds of gigabytes of home movies of my kids etc.

What's confusing me is that I can't seem to figure out how to use the M1 chip super fast video encoding. Right now, I have about 50 minutes of 1080P GoPro footage that I've edited and am exporting to HEVC and it's estimating that it will take ~20 minutes. I guess I'm..... underwhelmed? I mean, there is basically no CPU load on it, so I know it must be using hardware encoding, but is this what is to be expected? I've tried exporting from Quicktime, iMovie, and even bought Final Cut Pro in a fit of optimism and they all give roughly the same result. Haven't tried Handbrake yet, though.

Any insight and/or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[DrWebster]

The built-in hardware acceleration is quite performant, but doesn't work miracles (e.g. instant results). To be sure of your results, definitely try transcoding in HandBrake -- turn off all the video filters (deinterlace, etc) and use the "H.265 VideoToolbox" video encoder option.

 

[tytime]

50mins of high frame rate content at 1080p, transcoded in 20mins is already fast.

What are you using as a baseline for comparison?

 

[mklein]

I believe without the HVEC hardware encoding it would take realtime, so about 50min.