Remotion: Mac vs cloud containers
Short and long kinetic compositions on M2 Max / M1 Air vs Cloudflare Containers live and Docker standard-1 shape.
Measured bakeoffs
Benchmarks you can audit, not slogans.
On 2026-07-22 we ran the same Remotion compositions and a 20-minute 1080p encode across Apple M2 Max, Apple M1 Air hosts, and Cloudflare Containers standard-1 shapes. These pages publish wall-clock, package power where captured, and rate-card cost estimates with the methodology attached.
3 min Remotion · M2 Max111.5 s~1.9 min wall
Same job · CF Containers live2175 s~36.3 min wall
20 min VT encode · M2 Max95.1 sVideoToolbox H.264
Heavy Remotion package power~33 WSoC avg on M2 Max
Claim boundary: numbers below are from named research runs under
research/apple-silicon-idle-render-network/benchmarks/results/. Cloudflare dollar figures use published Containers rates × measured wall time (not an invoice). Package watts are macOS powermetrics SoC estimates, not wall-outlet meters. Idle-subtracted energy was not available on the long suite.Bakeoff reports
M1 Air vs M2 Max Remotion fleet
Same Light / Medium / Heavy compositions across three Apple Silicon hosts.
VideoToolbox vs software x264
20-minute 1080p30 encode on M2 Max VideoToolbox and libx264 vs a 0.5 vCPU container shape.
Mac render power draw
Package watt and watt-hour samples during Remotion renders, with electricity math at $0.1883/kWh.
Start with the method: How we benchmark Apple Silicon rendering explains the workload pinning, wall-clock, power, projection, and rate-card labels used in every report.
How we present these tests
Every bakeoff page uses the same structure so engineers can skim fast and auditors can dig:
- Headline verdict in the first paragraph.
- Hosts and software versions called out before any table.
- Measured vs projected rows labeled explicitly.
- Method notes for power, dollars, and what was skipped.
- Product implication tied back to RenderMac services, not generic GPU claims.
Remix pages: workload and FAQ views of the same data - 3-minute Remotion · 20-minute Remotion · M1 Air speed · M2 Max speed · Mac vs CF wall-clock · CF Remotion $ · full library.