Enough for my needs?

[Hendricks3]

i have an extra intel i5 4690 pc with 16gb of ddr3, could i build a nas that would work as a file storage, plex server and can video edit off of it?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Whats the drive and network config? I'd guess your gonna be network or disk limited well before the CPU or RAM for most uses. But if you have the hardware might as well try it for yourself.

[Hendricks3]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Whats the drive and network config? I'd guess your gonna be network or disk limited well before the CPU or RAM for most uses. But if you have the hardware might as well try it for yourself.

i want make sure its not gonna be a bad setup a least until i can get something better in the future when my yt channel takes off. so no drives or network config as of now. and if it does work for my application what drives and network would you recommend?

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 minutes ago, Hendricks3 said:

i want make sure its not gonna be a bad setup a least until i can get something better in the future when my yt channel takes off. so no drives or network config as of now. and if it does work for my application what drives and network would you recommend?

Without knowing more specific requirements its hard to know if it will be enough for editing? What bitrate is the footage? Network specs?

 

Why store footage on a NAS? If its only one editing local storage will likely be faster, more reliable, and easier to setup.

 

How much storage do you need? How many HDDs can your system hold?

[Hendricks3]

Currently i edit on davinci on my ipad pro m4. At first i started with prores LT for both recording and exporting but now transitioned to exporting on h265 mkv. As for network i thought of using 2.5g then transition to 10g when needed. Thoughts?

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 minutes ago, Hendricks3 said:

Currently i edit on davinci on my ipad pro m4. At first i started with prores LT for both recording and exporting but now transitioned to exporting on h265 mkv. As for network i thought of using 2.5g then transition to 10g when needed. Thoughts?

Would this ipad be wired into the network? Generally MacOS/Windows/Linux does better with network experience from my usage

 

What bitrate is the footage? Codec doesn't reallly matter, its mostly bitrate for the storage requirements.

 

Why not get a USB SSD? It will be much faster, and likely a lower cost, then copy the footage to the NAS when done.

 

How much storage do you need?

 

 

[Hendricks3]

8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Would this ipad be wired into the network? Generally MacOS/Windows/Linux does better with network experience from my usage

 

What bitrate is the footage? Codec doesn't reallly matter, its mostly bitrate for the storage requirements.

 

Why not get a USB SSD? It will be much faster, and likely a lower cost, then copy the footage to the NAS when done.

 

How much storage do you need?

 

 

Yes i have a usb to 2.5g adapter that i wanna use with this build also all the footage i record i have it on an nvme enclosure with a 1tb. As for bitrate cant seem to find the bitrate of prores anywhere lol and i want a nas for the convenience of having all of my footage in case i need it for future videos as b roll and i wanna have a plex server 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Hendricks3 said:

Yes i have a usb to 2.5g adapter that i wanna use with this build also all the footage i record i have it on an nvme enclosure with a 1tb. As for bitrate cant seem to find the bitrate of prores anywhere lol and i want a nas for the convenience of having all of my footage in case i need it for future videos as b roll and i wanna have a plex server 

How much storage do you need in this NAS?

 

How many drive bays can this system hold?

 

Get some 16-24TB drives that are a good value in your area?

[Hendricks3]

What would you recommend? What would be a good middle ground between price to storage?

[Bersella AI]

Such a NAS would indeed help you archive and manage unused pieces of footage properly. You may grab 4~6 large hard drives (4~6 SATA ports are expected for motherboards in this generation) and store at least 2 copies of footage by setting up RAID 1 or periodic replication. However, in case of just one user, you may not need to make video editing on-the-fly through Ethernet, as explained in the following:

• This approach generally costs more on storage and network, especially considering that raw ProRes clips may come with up to 200~300 Mbps of bandwidth, and it requires times more of bandwidth to guarantee a fluent preview.
• A workaround for this approach would be scheduled re-encoding on these raw ProRes clips on the server, so that they can be previewed with much lower requirements on bandwidth. However, it requires a lot of computing power, adding up overall costs and electricity bills.

So ultimately, it would be better to utilize a portable SSD for on-the-fly editing, and 2~6 hard drives (refurbished ones also acceptable) for mass storage and archiving, in regard of storage-price balance.

BTW, the photographer Zhang Qianli once said that he would pick up an iPad and a bunch of portable SSDs outdoors for instant editing, and would utilize his MacBook and a DAS (now replaced with a NAS) for refined editing and archiving at home.

[Hendricks3]

2 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

Such a NAS would indeed help you archive and manage unused pieces of footage properly. You may grab 4~6 large hard drives (4~6 SATA ports are expected for motherboards in this generation) and store at least 2 copies of footage by setting up RAID 1 or periodic replication. However, in case of just one user, you may not need to make video editing on-the-fly through Ethernet, as explained in the following:

• This approach generally costs more on storage and network, especially considering that raw ProRes clips may come with up to 200~300 Mbps of bandwidth, and it requires times more of bandwidth to guarantee a fluent preview.
• A workaround for this approach would be scheduled re-encoding on these raw ProRes clips on the server, so that they can be previewed with much lower requirements on bandwidth. However, it requires a lot of computing power, adding up overall costs and electricity bills.

So ultimately, it would be better to utilize a portable SSD for on-the-fly editing, and 2~6 hard drives (refurbished ones also acceptable) for mass storage and archiving, in regard of storage-price balance.

BTW, the photographer Zhang Qianli once said that he would pick up an iPad and a bunch of portable SSDs outdoors for instant editing, and would utilize his MacBook and a DAS (now replaced with a NAS) for refined editing and archiving at home.

so what would you recommend i do? price to performance to storage ratio?

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 hours ago, Hendricks3 said:

What would you recommend? What would be a good middle ground between price to storage?

How much storage do you need? How many bays can your system hold.

 

Its hard to help you with specifics if you don't have requirements for this NAS.

 

Do you have a budget for the drives?

 

I'd be tempted to edit off a desktop and put all these drives in a desktop for more speed and less systems.

[Hendricks3]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much storage do you need? How many bays can your system hold.

 

Its hard to help you with specifics if you don't have requirements for this NAS.

 

Do you have a budget for the drives?

 

I'd be tempted to edit off a desktop and put all these drives in a desktop for more speed and less systems.

i thought about getting refurbished drives and the system hold about 4 drives and i think 12tb-14tb should be sufficed for me 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Hendricks3 said:

i thought about getting refurbished drives and the system hold about 4 drives and i think 12tb-14tb should be sufficed for me 

Whats your backup plan if this NAS fails. Just making sure your prepared for the worst case situtation.

 

Also have you worked with NAS storage on the iPad? Its kinda a pain, so I'd probably spend your money on a desktop/laptop first.

[Hendricks3]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Whats your backup plan if this NAS fails. Just making sure your prepared for the worst case situtation.

 

Also have you worked with NAS storage on the iPad? Its kinda a pain, so I'd probably spend your money on a desktop/laptop first.

i have i have a wd my cloud and so far no problems aside from not having enough bandwidth for prores editing off of it and not being able to watch plex outsite of my place so id prob use it as a backup when/if i build this one

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, Hendricks3 said:

i have i have a wd my cloud and so far no problems aside from not having enough bandwidth for prores editing off of it and not being able to watch plex outsite of my place so id prob use it as a backup when/if i build this one

What is your network speed now? I'd guess the my cloud could fill gigabit, so most 4k30 prores would be fine from that.

[Hendricks3]

I have 300 down 60 up and the ports on the wd mycloud is gigabit

[Bersella AI]

14 hours ago, Hendricks3 said:

I have 300 down 60 up and the ports on the wd mycloud is gigabit

So you have Gigabit connections under Ethernet. Since the MyCloud has been struggling with loading ProRes clips, a new NAS would not give you a better experience as long as Ethernet stuff does not get upgraded -- this means additional costs of hundreds of dollars, worth of two hard drives.

As mentioned above, it would be better to have a portable SSD which contains footage just backed up from cameras and to be edited, and to have 1~3 pairs of hard drives which archive all of older, unused footage.