Calculator

Can my Mac edit this?

An estimate of whether your Mac can edit your footage smoothly or whether you should work with proxies. It accounts for the chip, RAM, codec, resolution, fps and multicam.

Your machine and footage

10-bit 4:2:2 and 4444 are much heavier than 8-bit 4:2:0 on the same chip.

Multicam or stacked layers/effects.

Don't know your Mac specs? 10-second guide

  1. Click the Apple menu (top-left corner of your screen).
  2. Pick About This Mac.
  3. You'll see the chip (e.g. "Apple M2 Pro") and memory (e.g. "32 GB"). That's all you need above.
  4. For more (GPU cores, model year), click More Info → System Report.

Browsers don't expose the Mac model or exact chip (Apple blocks that for privacy). Auto-detect only sees rough hints — for a real answer pick from the dropdowns above after checking About This Mac.

My saved presets PRO

Your cloud-synced presets for this tool. Load, delete or save new ones with the button above.

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Native vs proxy editing

Editing with proxies means generating lightweight copies (usually ProRes Proxy) to cut smoothly and relinking the originals only on export. It's the standard fix when the camera codec is heavy (Long-GOP H.264/HEVC, 10-bit 4:2:2 or high-resolution RAW) for the machine at hand.

Does RAM matter more than the chip?

Both. The chip sets decode horsepower; RAM limits how many streams and what resolution you can handle without choking. 16 GB is fine for HD and light 4K; for 4K multicam, 6K/8K or RAW you want 32 GB or more.

What about the disk?

Intra-frame and RAW codecs have very high data rates: a slow SSD can be the bottleneck even when the chip is idle. Check the storage calculator to see your format's data rate.