I know mimoLive is not fully M1 compatible (I look forward when it is, but know that it is a ton of work!). My 2014 iMac is not long for this world and I need a reliable computer. MimoLive is an important but only one part of my work, and I really don’t want to get another intel Mac at this point.
For anyone running mimoLive on an M1 do you have any pointers? Anything to avoid? What breaks frequently? What just works? Anything I should know?
@Kebbel I don’t know of any feature that doesn’t work. The problem is mostly perfomance. It has a tipping point up to that everything works fine and then suddenly everything doesn’t. So you need to be careful about how many sources you add, how many layers you use and how many playout destinations you run.
We completely agree: You shouldn’t buy a new Intel MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or Mac mini at this point. But neither should you buy a new M1 because the M1 is an entry level model. It is darn powerful for the price and there is no faster portable Mac, but the 10 core i9 iMac 27" with the Radeon Pro 5700 XT still outperforms the current M1 models, especially in graphics. Of course this might change in the next few months when new Apple Silicon Macs might be released.
Is there any guidance on what the “tipping point” is? For example, I generally have two shows… both are similar … 4 mimocalls, one has 20 layers, the other 22 (lots of variations)…All mimocalls and the program recorded separately…both generally work fine on my 2014 iMac 4Ghz Quad-Core i7 w/32GB Ram and AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB. I’ve been hoping that apple would introduce the new higher end chip “anytime” for the past 4-5 months as I’ve been having problems with the iMac.
… I was hoping to buy one of the “top of the line” 
M1 mac minis as a bridge… then buy a top of the line MacBook Pro (or whatever they call it) whenever they are introduced and repurpose the mini to another task afterwards.
Any thoughts on whether this mini could get me through in the short term? $1500 for a mac mini is palatable, and I can then confidently move to the M1X or M2 whatever in the next few months. Spending $4500 or more on an intel iMac be a tough business decision ($CAD).
@Kebbel in my experience so far you can’t use the M1 in a live production environment. It’s just too unpredictable.
I was faced with the same issue as you needed to upgrade dated equipment so I got the top spec M1, but it just has not been reliable enough to use day to day.
I look forward to an ARM based version Of mimoLive with great anticipation. The reality is that there is no available timeline on when that will happen. I imagine it will require a complete rewrite of the code base as the current version relies on Quartz which is not an option for Boinx going forward. Apple deprecated it a couple of years ago.
My advice would be to buy a good second hand intel Mac to get you through this stage. It seems there are plenty on the second hand market as people upgrade to M1 based machines
@hutchinson.james_boi Fortunately, the Quartz Composer part is not the road block to native M1 support, because - while being deprecated - it is present and M1 native on Big Sur and Monterey. While this means we are a lot closer to M1 than we thought, we still can’t provide a release date at this time.
This is definitely not going to work on M1 at this time with mimoLive running in Rosetta.
Not without M1 native mimoLive. We don’t know yet how well mimoLive native will perform.
I see your point. You could consider that the top of the line Intel 27" iMac will be giving you great performance for a couple of years to come and there probably wouldn’t be a need to switch to M1X or M2 immediately. And although Intel Macs will take a hit in the second hand market, you could still sell it to recover some of the investment.
Thanks for the feedback. I probably will try to get my current iMac repaired, or as @hutchinson.james_boi suggests, finding something used. Looking forward to an Apple Silicon version of mimoLive!!! 
I have 3 M1-devices here, a MacPro 2013 and some macMinis (intel) and mimo is running on a Hackintosh. *gg Can’t wait for mimoLiveNativeM1. 
@JoPhi have you tried running MimoLive on the M1s? Max a few layers? Just curious of your experience…
I use it for quick drafting, but it’s not realy useful (on rosetta 2).
Sometimes, I use mimoLive as virtual audio/video cable for one source (iPhone/iPad), but for more it’s tooooo bottle-necked.
I also had one test-stream, one 1080p-cam + background. That was ok, at least till I added more.
I’m sure that it will beat the mac Pro 2013 (far ahead) in future, but rosetta and the non optimized memory story are the spoilsport.
Just wondering if there is any update on a fully M1 compatible version of mimoLive? Or at least maybe when we can expect an update? (Especially if the rumours of the MacBook Pro’s coming soon are true!) Thanks in advance @Oliver_Boinx
Dear Oliver, do we have an expected release date for the m1 version?
Just popped into the forums to check on how mimoLive was coping with the new M1 macs before I upgraded myself and saw this thread. I am wondering if I should just wait until we are native on M1. I usually run a single camera / audio in (from ATEM mini) with a few graphic layers, images, PiP etc - all fed out to the virtual camera or direct to a data projector. On occasion there is a second webcam involved.
Should I wait? Or do I go for the new M1 now? Sadly I do not have the option of having both. It’s a trade in job when I go for it.
Hi Marty, go with the M1. Personally, I would wait until October as Apple is expected to announce new models by then. We have a pre-release version of mimoLive for M1 which will be released as a beta soon.
Hi Marty.
I found myself in the same predicament several months ago. I bought a MacMini M1. Until recently I was not able to use mimoLive on it for production.
I’m happy to report that the new M1 version of mimoLive that I have been testing is running great, with all the power of the M1 available to use.
It sounds like Boinx will be releasing the public beta fairly soon, which will be great.
I agree with Oliver, Apple are expected to announce new machines in a couple of weeks. Possibly including a rumoured new even more powerful version of the MacMini M1.
Best if luck.
OK - I shall wait and see what Apple announce and jump on the M1 mimoLive when it arrives
Just wanted to note that I see that the beta is out: https://boinx.com/connect/mimolive/versionhistory/6.0b1. I have been using the alpha for a while but not on a production system. Seems very stable except for the issues noted in the release notes (mimocall back channel and virtual camera audio) . I had a couple crashes on my intel system on the alpha. Nothing so far on the beta but it is very early. Seems very stable BUT I’d never use a beta for client work (this is true of any software, not a comment on mimoLive!).
New member here, first post. Hello.
Just want to say I’ve just run some tests on an M1 air 8gb of ram. 6 mimo calls, live streaming and local recording. The render meter only just had a green box light up on the 6 caller grid view render.
Same mimo file on an Intel iMac with 40gb ram and 8gb graphics card was hitting the red this morning when 6 call grid view was live.
Return video feed wasn’t the most stable as it says on the beta release notes.
Very very promising. Impressive first results.
Thanks! This makes me VERY hopeful. I do some client shows with a relatively large number of mimoCalls (5-6 at a time). My clients are always trying to push me to include more people, but my poor 2014 iMac w/32GB of RAM and 8GB of video tops out at 6 people (sometimes 7). I haven’t had a chance to test that large number on a M1 mac yet (just played around). I’ve been holding off buying a desperately needed machine for both the mimoLive to be apple silicon compatible and hoping that apple releases the M1X or M2 whatever. Its beginning to look like the non-beta release of mimoLive and the Apple silicon M1X or whatever may have a similar timeline!
Fingers crossed!
I used the Universal-Alpha for quite some time on a MacBookProM1 and on a MacBookAirM1. It’s impressive on both machines. I had just one crash (I changed the “logo” of the Lower-Thirds-Layer to WebCam. And boom!) - Some very very very old Layers (which are not included anymore) are not working (But this won’t be any problem).
I also used it on the Intel-Hackintosh, and I was very happy with it. It was not on purpose, it was by chance, I did not realize that I use it, until I notized the quick load of the documents. Too quick, because in very huge documents, some layer-setings were not preloaded propper. But, it was an alpha. (With scripts this can be dangerous.) I hope that this is solved in the beta-version.
No Risk No Fun:
I always use the newest Beta-Versions for my streams. - So, this evening I’ll know more… 
Sure, there can be troubles. But mimoLive is in so heavy development and enhancement, that all betas and releases are great!
BTW: The Alpha on M1 was able to outperform all other intel-Macs I own (even on MacBookAirM1). It’s not far away from my used hackintosh (which outperforms lots of real Macs) - Power consumption is different.