Video Editing on a Synology NAS - How to Set it Up

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Of all the industries that have grown in terms of data storage, video editing and production has got to be one of the largest generators of unique and ever increasingly size data in the world. From wildlife photographers and fashion, to KZbin content creators and large scale movie production, video editing is BIG business and require power, speed and efficiency from it's hardware environment in order to achieve success. Up until a few years ago, editing footage in post-production with popular editing software (Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, DaVinci, etc) could be done quite easily on your local HDD/SSD (your C:/) or via a connected external drive. However fast forward to last 2-3years and you see that the SIZE of the footage in 4K and 1080p, as well as the performance required to edit it is significantly higher than the performance available to most SATA SSD inside your machine or an external drive. From there the industry moved into NVMe SSD and Thunderbolt DAS RAID external storage, which do get the job done BUT with the prohibitive cost of NVMe AND it's low top capacities, as well as the poor portability of Thunderbolt RAID DAS in the field and its single-connection-allow architecture, make them good but not perfect. Which leads me to 10Gbe and/or Thunderbolt NAS for video editing. Now, it too is not perfect, BUT it ticks ALOT of the boxes. Video Editing on a NAS over 10Gbe or via a Thunderbolt-equipped NAS drive presents a number of advantages and improvements of what came before, such as:
Editing on a NAS over 10Gbe can provide up to 1000MB/s performance, which can be further increased with link aggregation or upgrading network interface ports later down the line
Editing over Thunderbolt NAS can get up to 1600MB/s, depending on the storage media and thunderbolt NAS you choose
Editing on a NAS allows you to upgrade the connection during the storage solutions lifespan (with PCIe upgrade cards on both the NAS and cards/external adapters on your physical system) to increase the connection to double, triple or even quadruple your performance
Editing on a NAS allows you to improve the workflow in your video editing with multiple users in the chain. A NAS can be accessed by multiple users at once and each can have a dedicated speed and priority of access depending on their task needs
Not only can you edit on the NAS, but factoring the NAS into your backup strategy allows you to significantly lessen the chances of losing your data - run a duplication task in the NAS, or use the NAS Backup Software to duplicate key files on a schedule or live to numerous devices (another NAS, USB, the cloud and more)
Editing on a NAS also allows you to upload raw/pre-production footage remotely whilst off-site, so it is then ready to be edited on as soon as you return to your desk
Are you interested in all things data storage. Perhaps you are a Mac users and want to know if this NAS, DAS, Cable or Drive will work for you? That is where and Robbie can help. For over 20 years has been helping companies and individuals worldwide with their digital archive and storage needs. Alongside that Robbie (Robert Andrews if you want to be delightfully formal) has been spending the last few years keeping you up to date on all things data and won't shut up about it!
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[@StoneColdGroove1]

Finally, after searching all around youtube, a video that shows how to actually have an editing software work on a NAS unit and open up collaborations

[@davidwillno]

I'm looking at buying a NAS (the DS420 with RAID5 seems to be a good start). I do a lot of 4k video editing on an external SSD over TB3, then archiving to a big 10 TB drive - however that drive recently died. As laptops are increasingly using thunderbolt and wifi6 (and ethernet ports are going away), I am looking at my best upgrade options 1) archive solutions 2)media sharing to the TV; 3)sharing files to clients in their own password protected folders; 4) possibly editing directly from the NAS. I would LOVE to see you do real world tests of a 4k timeline comparing various configurations. such as: external SSD vs 1GB ethernet (since this is the standard connection) vs thunderbolt3 vs wifi5 (probably too slow but good to see) vs wifi6 (theoretically fast enough). this sort of test would be greatly valuable. in determining my next upgrades. Maybe a wifi6 router is the solution, perhaps a TB3 dongle with a ethernet port is the solution. Can it handle the insta360 5.7k footage?

[@davidwillno]

to clarify "real world tests"... how smoothly can footage play back on a timeline. 1) one track of 4k or 5.7k footage. 2) two tracks of footage etc. on Premiere pro on davinci? are there any frames being dropped? how many video tracks can you add until you start dropping frames? (ext SSD over TB3 vs 1GB ethernet vs wifi6)

[@MacherTV]

@@davidwillno +1 on the real world test. This would be tremendously useful to see how "smoothly" 1GB network/NAS editing is. I don't know if I can afford a 10GBE NAS/Setup right now and I am thinking about editing of a 1GB NAS/Setup... No sure how bad the experience will be. Maybe aceptable?

[@germanyproductreviews4136]

which one did you buy for your editing on the NAS itself. im too looking out for one. Please advise.

[@davidwillno]

@Germany Product Reviews i ended up getting a DS920. I edite on a super fast PCI gen4 Sabrent SSD (added to my 9710 xps17 as a 2nd SSD) and use the DS920 for archiving.

[@JasonTaylor-po5xc]

I like the idea of keeping my originals and project files on the NAS but all caches including proxies on my local system - specifically on a dedicated SSD for much better performance. This also allows the use of slower network connections instead of needing 10gb - 5/2.5/1g are acceptable. The faster network speeds just makes for faster uploads from the source device (cameras) and downloads from the video editor software for making proxies. If you know what you are doing, you could then use a sync program to copy proxies back to the NAS if you needed them on another device if you use multiple machines for editing. If editing on the NAS, you do need to think about the backups of the originals. Synology has several options available to help automate that. Also, you can ensure you are using an editor that makes non-destructive changes - not all editors support this - so having a dedicated backups folder or drive is recommended. For the truly hardcore, go with a dedicated NAS as a backup - offsite if you can.

[@reggievisionfx]

What's your advice for someone using DaVinci Resolve

[@JasonTaylor-po5xc]

@@reggievisionfx Since I can't always be connected at 10g, I use local proxies with originals stored on the NAS. Of course, that means the 10g network is a less needed upgrade - 2.5g is the sweet spot right now (price vs performance). I still use 10g for my network backbone (10g drops to most rooms in the house) plus to the NAS. Standardizing on a single OS/platform for Resolve is also helpful. I was on Windows and I wanted to use my new shinny MacBook Pro for editing (M1 Max) - but going between the two platforms is painful/not worth it. One time conversion works fine.

[@matthewwellman]

Thank you, I've been wondering if something like this was possible.

[@rashadal-safar1931]

what about 6k red raw files? you think it will handle them on a ds1821+ with a 10gig connection? will upgrade to 32 gig ram and use 2 x 800 gig Nvme ssd's for caching

[@BetterEditor]

You sir are a rockstar!

[@therealtimz]

So is it not possible to do a simple trim directly on the NAS? The thunderbolt solution is not an option for me. I can map the drives but its very slow

[@Nickkettt]

Thank you for this kind of videos. I wonder why I can’t pass 220mb/s with my Nas with 2 disk in SHR... Now I know , more disk more speed... 👍

[@thatssoo949]

Depends on the speed of your hard drives. A typical 7200rpm drive will run about 100-120MB/s read and write, which means if you're in RAID0 or RAID10 you can expect about double that with 2 drives. Sounds like you're getting some good speeds.

[@PeterMcClintock]

I find a better solution is to dedicate the D: drive (SSD) on my laptop as a Synology Drive. This then syncs to a shared folder on the NAS. For projects that I am not currently working on I use Synology Drive to Free Up Space. This effectively gives me a disk effectively the size of the NAS but as fast as the internal SSD on my laptop.

[@Storysium]

Excellent! Thanks for the guide.

[@bodoblockmann9122]

The title appears misleading. The editing process itself is on the client, not on the nas.😉

[@nijaljiggetts4749]

Awesome video. How do you install the Davinci Project Server on a Synology NAS, so it can host not just the files, but the project as well?

[@chiribimchiribim]

Hi, thanks for the video! I am just hearing about this technology and I am wondering if it would be possible to edit while being in another location where the NAS is? For a video production point of view which Sinology would you recommend that can be accessed remotely and has a high load capacity (eg. 40 tb)? Many thanks!

[@OmniMediaLtd]

hyuge video

[@HVACUncensored]

Awesome videos I lost a bunch of data and bought the DS418 to start out. These videos have been crucial in helping me set everything up. I don’t mine can do 10gb but if I ever upgrade how does that work in a residential application. I have 2 1GB connections coming into my house. 1 for the family and one for my studio. Would I need to get commercial grade internet to use the 10GB internet? Anyway thanks really appreciate your videos

[@HVACUncensored]

I have 4 -4TB drives in the DS418 should I do SHR or Raid 5. I have a podcast that do video and audio. Not a crazy power user but have enough stuff between the podcast and personal stuff I don’t wanna lose. Just had a Mac crash and lost some data. Thank god I still have everything I need just wanna be prepared so this never happens again.

[@chriscardwell3495]

For budget Synology NAS systems I believe the file transfer speed is approx 2.5 Gbe (even with a 10 Gbe network card). So the cheapest and most effective solution - for one person - would be NVMe M.2 SSD on their local PC. Then archive the files on NAS

[@TheLDunn1]

chris cardwell ....can you expand upon the comment that file speed is limited to 2.5GBe even when a 10 GBe card is fitted & used please. I’m not sure I understand that.

[@berntespelien734]

Lawrence Dunn thats about the throughput you will get out of 4 drives in raid 5 / SHR and a slow cpu

[@TheLDunn1]

Bernt Espelien ...ah yes, that makes some sense....’budget Synology’ is probably referring to a 4 bay device....if that is what Chris meant. I was thinking Chris might know some other system bottle neck restricting things to 2.5GBe. In a 4 HDD Raid 5, you’d get 3x the speed of an individual drive. For the sake of argument, let’s call it 200MB/s if you went for the best individual HDD’s, so 600MB/s for the 4 disk raid 5.....that would make it over 2.5GBe. 1080P full HD data streams are around 580MB/s, so you might just be able video edit it.

[@berntespelien734]

Lawrence Dunn yea you should be able to edit most content on any nas 2.5 gig and above. 1 gig will struggle though

[@fabianfeldmann4500]

​@@TheLDunn1 1080p FHD data Streams are not 580MB/s. It depends highly on the codec and bitrate, but it's more like 10Mb/s (KZbin), 50Mb/s (lower end DSLR) or up to 400Mb/s (higher end bitrates for higher end DSLRs). 8Mb/s (Megabit/s) is about 1MB/s (MegaByte/s), so the speeds range from about 1MB/s to around 50MB/s. Depending on compression and maybe RAW Video Data a little bit less or more is also possible, but not in the ballpark of 580MB/s. :) A NAS of this caliber with 10GBe is able to handle at least 3 data streams for high bitrate 4K (~1000Mbs each) simultaneously.

[@germanyproductreviews4136]

i want to edit my 4K videos while they are on the NAS. Can you recommend a 4 Bay NAS which is capable for video editing.

[@PetrosTriantafyllidis]

I will like to see a videos editing from a pc in work and the nas at homepage..👍

[@berntespelien734]

So Im getting this nas next week and plan to use it for videoediting as well as a Plex server. Can i connect one of the nas gigabits to my router for general purposes. Connect the 10gbe directly to my Mac for video editing. All while my Mac is getting its network connection over wifi?

[@Sultanxxx123]

Someone please answer this!

[@johnhurlbut]

Also my question

[@robbiepilot]

Wow - thanks!!

[@ShivamNaikGovenkar]

Will it be possible to edit while the disk are in raid 1

[@nascompares]

Yes, but you will see a drop in performance until the RAID is completed!

[@sivasregal4895]

can i connect and work from 4 separate work stations (video editing) from a synology ds220j?