Using a NAS for media storage?

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Level 1

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Using a NAS for media storage?

A friend of mine is using her 2011 27" iMac for video editing with Final Cut Pro X. For the last two years, she always kept her iMac's hard drive nearly empty and stored the movie files on a few sets of two USB 2.0 hard drives - those sets of two were each turned in to a RAID 1 via Disk Utility. She then copied the data she was working with to her iMac's internal disk and put them back onto the USB drives after finishing the project.

However, she wasn't satisfied with that - and aas the RAID volumes kept restoring after a reboot of the computer and the transfer rates of the RAID volumes over USB 2.0 weren't too great altogether, she finally got a QNAP TS-421 4-bay NAS.

I did now set up the QNAP drive to cluster its four 2TB hard drives into a 5,9 TB RAID5 volume and mounted it on the iMac via SMB. When I then tried to create an event on the volume, I saw that Final Cut doesn't show it in the list of available drives, and when I googled for possible solutions, I found that Final Cut does not show network drives as an event or project location at all.

I have to say that I'm astonished that an Apple Pro application does not allow you to use your network shares as storage, but for now, I'll have to live with that and find a way around it.

A possible solution that many websites suggest is creating a disk image on the network drive and then mount it on the Mac. Final Cut will then recognize it as a storage volume. However, I wonder how this will affect the disk's performance. Do you have any tips regarding this concern?

For another approach, the TS-421 NAS supports AFP and iSCSI in addition to SMB. Would the use of either of these allow me to use the volume in Final Cut without using an extra disk image file?

Thank you in advance!

iYassin

Posted on Sep 18, 2013 3:44 PM

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Answer 1

James Cude

Level 4

1,587 points

Sep 18, 2013 3:52 PM in response to iYassin

You cannot create a Project or an Event directly on a NAS drive. However you can easily store your media on the NAS and drag it into locally stored Events. Just make sure Copy Files to Final Cut Events folder is unchecked in preferences so that it stays on the NAS.

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Answer 2

Sep 18, 2013 9:23 PM in response to iYassin

We have been using sparse disk images with GB and 10GBE, over a network, on a 60TB NAS.

It's pretty solid. I describe it here.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MagicFeatherInc

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Answer 3

jakobunn

Level 1

12 points

Aug 28, 2016 6:01 AM in response to James Cude

Thank you so much! I've been searching everywhere for a good solution! The sparse image option which everyone seem to suggest just does not have fast enough disk speeds from my tests. Using a temporary storage disk is a horrible idea too and you spend most of your time moving projects and trying to recover data.

This solution is simple and does exactly what i want it to do so far! Thank you!

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Answer 4

BenB

Level 6

13,342 points

Aug 28, 2016 7:01 AM in response to iYassin

First of all, USB 2.0 is way, way, way to slow for video editing, always has been. Even RAID on USB 2.0 is a waste of time and money. USB 2.0 doesn't allow for the constant streaming video editing demands (it is a burst format, not streaming format). USB 3.0 is all she need for her RAID, with 7200rpm drives. Slower drives won't hold up to video editing demand. NAS is a bit overkill for a single editor. FCPX works with SAN very well, and with NAS is set up properly. But there is no advantage for a single user, when USB 3.2 RAID (or even a single 7200rpm drive) is plenty of speed for video editing.

Or look at the Jellyfish, which blows everything else away.

http://lumaforge.com/jellyfish

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