Skip to content
Support

Speed and memory

Making a movie is the heaviest job most Macs will ever do. Here is where the time goes.

On screen

Set speed on the Movie page

Quality, shot length and body language set how long a movie takes.

  1. 1

    Quality

    Draft films at quarter size in minutes. Standard is the movie you keep.

  2. 2

    Longest shot

    Shorter shots film faster, start sooner and use less memory. Longer ones have fewer joins.

  3. 3

    Between shots

    Flowing carries gestures across joins. Same pose keeps the face steady.

  4. 4

    Body language

    From calm anchor to expressive keynote speaker.

Q3 Keynote
The Movie page: quality, Movie settings open with size, sharper small faces, sharpening and stills per camera, and the Performance panel with occasion and body language
On screen

Film model memory

The Models window shows whether the film model is held in memory or streamed from the SSD.

  1. 1

    Memory

    Automatic keeps the film model in memory where it fits and streams it otherwise. You can force either mode.

  2. 2

    What this Mac does

    How much memory this Mac has and what the film model does with it.

  3. 3

    The drawing model

    FLUX.2 Klein 9B, or the Apache-licensed 4B for commercial work.

Models
The film model's Memory choice and the drawing model's memory note in the Models window

Rough timings on an M5 Max with 128 GB

  • Voice design and all spoken sentences: under a minute for a short script.
  • Stills for each camera: two to three minutes each.
  • One 5-second shot: about 4 minutes at Draft, 25 at Standard, two and a half hours at High. Sharper small faces adds about half an hour a shot when the face is small.
  • One minute of movie at Draft: about an hour.
  • One minute of movie at Standard: about five hours. High films at the model's full size and takes about six times as long.
  • Running again with nothing changed: seconds.

Work in Draft, finish in Standard

Draft films at quarter size — ideal for checking timing, cuts and body language. When it looks right, switch to Standard and render overnight.

Only what changed is filmed again

Every step is cached. Change one sentence and only its shot is filmed again. Change one shot's camera and only that shot is touched. An app update keeps the stills and shots it would make otherwise, as long as what you gave them is the same; Movie, Generated Files, Redraw Stills and Film Again makes them with the new version when you want it.

Memory

128 GB is recommended; 32 GB works. Of the film model's 62 GB file, only part stays in memory while it films: about 30-45 GB on an M5, which holds its transformer in int8, and 45-65 GB on other Macs. Where that fits (from 64 GB on an M5, High's longest shots excepted, and from 96 GB on other Macs) the app keeps it in memory. With less, it streams the transformer from the SSD layer by layer, using about 10 GB — slower, and on an M5 in BF16 instead of int8, so small details can differ; on other Macs the picture is the same. Memory, on the film model's row in the Models window, shows what your Mac does and lets you choose.

Placing the presenter needs FLUX.2 Klein 9B for a faithful likeness, and 9B wants about 40 GB the graphics may use — a Mac with 64 GB or more. On a Mac with 32 or 48 GB the app takes the smaller Klein 4B instead: it draws faster, but holds a particular face less well. The timings above are for an M5 Max; a smaller chip takes several times as long. Less than 32 GB is not supported.

Before a long render, close other large apps — browsers with many tabs, virtual machines, other AI tools. If memory pressure in Activity Monitor turns red, rendering slows dramatically.

Longest shot trades speed for continuity: shorter shots film faster, start sooner and use less memory; longer ones have fewer joins.