Which Synology is the Best NAS for Video Editing?

[Music] hey and welcome to stitch pro tips i'm andy evanson and here we work smarter and not harder which is why today i've got to talk to you about which synology nas is the best for video editing now you're watching this because you are running out of storage space but you don't want to keep on buying external drives right buying external drive after external drive is not only expensive but it's vastly more inefficient than using a nas for video editing and also with external drives it can get really messy you just don't know where all your files are when they're on lots of different external drives as well as this if you're in a post-production team and it's growing which is great then you want to be able to work from shared storage so that you can work on the same projects at the same time with external drives you can't do that so that's where synology comes in now how do i know what i'm talking about well i've had quite a few years experience in the vfx industry in feature film um in tv broadcast and in digital content production and throughout that i've used a variety of different storage mediums but by and far the best is using a nas for shared storage so that you can all edit at the same time in real time [Music] if you are new to this and you're asking what is an s well that's a very good question and let's just take a step back briefly and discuss what anas actually is so that you can get your head around it before going into this now nas is essentially a little computer um that all it does is it sits on your network it doesn't even have a viewing interface it's not like a laptop or desktop or anything like that it literally only connects to your network so that it can be accessed on your network or sometimes externally via browser which synology does have but primarily it sits within your local area network so that everyone on that network can access it but in more specific terms nas stands for network attached storage now the reason that it doesn't have a viewing interface is because it runs its own operating software that is accessed from a browser that acts as the viewing interface so you go onto a browser within your local network and you access the nas from that and you can do everything that you need to right from that browser the storage capabilities alone of a nas far outweigh external drives ranging from terabytes up to petabytes of space now along with all of those bays and the storage that you have in them you can actually set up your nas in what is called a raid level now raid is a way for you to protect your files and your clients files by having a level of failure tolerance within your nas system raid allows for files on ns to be mirrored or striped so that if a disk were to go bad you do not lose all of your data you just need to replace that disk and it will instantly be there ready for you next time essentially you are using some of that disk space to protect yourself from corruptions or bad disks if a disk goes bad you can just replace it and you don't lose any of your data however it does take up some of that space so if you have four bay nas then two of those disk bays are likely going to be mirrors of the other two so why synology well synology have been in the game for a while i absolutely love working with synologies purely because of the fact that it's easy to use easy to set up and have got a great reputation along network engineers video editors you know all sorts of different professionals that need network attack storage they are one of the best and easiest to get into and i've personally been using synology since about 2015 in various different productions and with different teams that i've managed as well now synology have their own operating system as i said a little bit earlier and it's called synology disk station now it is very very easy to use and get set up with and it's not bogged down with lots of different menus advanced items that you might not need that do come with other nas systems if you want to synology nasa's also come with a variety of apps that you can use for web hosting email personal cloud services like dropbox if you can think of it it's probably got it now something that i really like about synology nas is and nasa's in general but knowledge you do this pretty well is the ability to set permission groups for users so if you've got someone that's very junior a freelancer or someone that you don't want to be able to access all of your archive for example or some very sensitive projects that are currently going on then you can just make sure that they only have access to the data that they need by setting permission levels for user groups very very very handy as a production manager so what advantages does a nas have over editing from external storage well nasa's are pretty simple they're organized and they're fast if you have the right configuration nas can be so much faster than an external hard drive through usb nas enclosures are built for the exact purpose that you need them for centralized storage and they do it very very well editing video from external drives opens you up to a whole host of issues that i'm probably sure you're already aware of um which cable do i need how much storage have i got left where are my files on this drive are they on another drive this drive's now damaged how can i retrieve my files well with an s you don't need any of that it's all sold for you it just removes one of those headaches that can be a bug bear in a workflow now finding media in your drives is definitely one of the hardest things if you're not well organized meticulous with your labeling of those drives but with a nas you have a search function built within it so you literally do not need to worry about that ever again and as i said with those cables you know you've got all the different sorts of usb connections that you can now have these days but with an s you literally just have an ethernet port maybe two ethernet ports and that is it it's on your network you don't need to daisy chain it anywhere it's literally just there on your network you can double click and access it whenever you need to now the speed and connection type of an external hard drive is something you don't have to worry about either with an s because if you have the right hardware set up and the with your network nas can be very very very fast indeed allowing you to edit 4k footage in real time from multiple users at the same time that's really fast and even if you have just the standard network setup probably a gigabit connection at this point and it's just yourself maybe two of you then you will still be able to edit hd footage in real time from an s absolutely no problem whatsoever if it's just one person if it's just you editing from a gigabit connection you can edit 4k footage in real time from your nas so let's get to it which synology is the best nest for video editing for your size of production team and your budget let's have a look let's deep dive and i'm going to base this on the fact that you have a gigabit connection to begin with once we get further down the list and we get into the bulky stuff you are going to want to look at upgrading that connection to a 10 gigabit just so you can have more users editing 4k footage at the same time but for now let's just go on the assumption that you've got gigabit connection all of the links to everything i'm talking about is down in the description make sure you check them out if you're interested in any of these now do let me know in the comments below which synology you are going to be going with and why and if you've already got one how good it is for the others to be able to see and make sure that they are getting the right one too and remember to like this video if you're enjoying it hit that subscribe button and tick that bell notification so that you're notified whenever i upload [Music] okay so the first analogy that we should talk about is the ds720 plus which is great for personal use or one to two users it features a four core two gigahertz cpu with two gigabytes of ddr4 ram which is scalable up to six gigabytes and one of the best features of this is that it has two gigabit lan ports that means that you can bond these in the network settings of synology so that you can effectively have the bandwidth of a two gigabit connection which means if you are editing with two people you can both get 4k footage out of this nest in real time and this is a two-based system which can store up to about 32 terabytes of storage with two 16 terabyte disks each now if you do want to set up raid that will reduce that capacity slightly or half it um so do bear that in mind when you're thinking about a two bay nest the d720 plus is a fantastic choice for your first nest having the two bays does give you disk failure tolerance but 16 terabytes should be more than enough for one to two people if you are needing more than that then you should probably take a look at the next product which is a four bayness if you did want to go for the two bay and have more discs then you can also look at the synology expansion unit which allows you to add five more disks of storage space onto your system it can work with any pretty much any synology nas and it is a fantastic piece of kit if you are running out of space on the nas you currently have but if you're looking at two bay i would probably look at four bay before getting that expansion unit now if you want to get faster speeds out of this particular unit then it does have an m.2 port in it so you can add an ssd in there so that you can get something called ssd caching which is a fantastic feature and something that qnap nasties do very well but synology are also on the game too [Music] it allows you to have your most frequent and used data in the ssd which is the fastest disk that your nas will have so that your data can be accessed above some of the older archive potentially data that you don't need to access as much which means the speed with which you can access that data is significantly faster than accessing it from the traditional mechanical hdds now this should be a great nas for getting your production team off the ground for around 500 bucks that's without discs but it's also a great nest for home video editors as well [Music] now that four bay that i was talking about is the ds918 plus it is a great nas enclosure for one to four people now with a quad core 1.5 gigahertz cpu and with ram scalable up to eight gigabytes two lan ports and four bays of up to 64 terabytes of storage this is perfect for getting that small team off the ground now with four bays it allows you to upgrade your raid level to raid level 10 which will maximize your failure tolerance and disk mirroring and striping so that if you have any bad disk you're not going to lose data but also the efficiency of the raid is so much greater as well you can't do this with any less than four bays so this is a perfect way to enter that raid 10 level setup as i mentioned it has two gigabit lan ports which means you can get that two gigabit bonded connection through the network settings of the synology which means if you've got four people editing from it at the same time you can easily easily easily edit hd footage in real time and two to three of them can edit 4k footage in real time as well if you want four people to be able to edit in real time 4k footage then you are probably going to be looking at the next tier up which i'll talk to you about in a second now this unit is currently retailing for around about 550 to 600 without any discs and this is something that i will mention to you a little bit later on i do have a fantastic post on the website about which discs i prefer and why so check that out i'll put a link down below the next one the synology ds2419 plus is great for around four to ten users but the kicker here is it has four gigabit lan ports now 10 is probably you're the maximum the ceiling of where this goes because if you are bonding that and have a four gigabit connection through your ports then you are probably only going to be able to edit hd for 10 users for users you can maximize on that bond and get 4k real time no problem whatsoever now this unit has a quad-core 2.1 gigahertz cpu with up to 32 gigabytes of ram available to be scaled in this unit as well and with the size of this unit 12 bays that's 12 bays of storage you can put in there you can have up to 192 terabytes of storage if you filled all of those 12 bays with 16 terabytes each and didn't have any raid levels set up at all which i highly highly highly discourage again i highly recommend adding ssds for ssd caching with this particular unit ssd caching is something that if you have the budget for in fact it's it's a great mix for budgets because you can maximize on speed and with pricing of your disks by using ssd caching if you go for a higher tier nas and have to fill it with hdds you will not get the same speed as if you go for a middle range nest but fill the front load with ssds and this the cold storage should we say the archival bit with hdds that is the the best in the venn diagram that is the bit that you want with that ssd cache that's where you get the optimal price and speed for your money something that's also great about this nas is that it does have the ability to add in a 10 gigabit network card that means if you are reaching that limit with 10 users but need to be able to go up to 4k you can install on the inside of this machine a network card like you would find in a desktop pc but for 10 gigabit connection that will mean that you'll need to upgrade your network to be 10 gigabit so your switch and your cabling and your computers all need to be able to access 10 gigabit connections but if you do the speeds are through the roof you can say it's just one person you can transfer up to 10 000 megabits per second now that is lightning fast and if you consider that 4k footage needs anywhere from 200 to 300 megabits a second you have got a lot of users able to edit 4k footage in real time now this unit does retail for around 1 500 to 1 650 depending where you get it have a link look at the link down below for the best price that's a fair whack but if you are investing in your post-production team then you cannot go wrong with this unit and with scalable storage in up to 12 bays you won't run out of storage for a long time [Music] now the next one is a little bit of a mouthful for me to say it is the synology rs4017xs plus now this is a very high level professional nest for post-production teams that are way past 10 users already and are looking to scale and be able to edit in 4k without any problems whatsoever and this nas is no ordinary nas it features an intel xeon d15418 core processor with eight gigabytes of ddr4 ram which is scalable up to 64 gigabytes if you have the budget definitely invest in more ram when you're looking at this many users all accessing it at the same time and the best part about this ness and the reason why i've recommended it primarily is because it has two 10 gigabit ports on the back of it when bonded that is 20 gigabit speeds 20 000 megabits per second that is a whole lot of bandwidth and for post production teams of 10 plus users you are not going to have any issues editing from this in real time now with 16 bays filled with 16 terabytes each you could have up to 256 terabytes in that nas that is a huge amount of storage you shouldn't run out for a very long time now because this is a rack mounted nest it's not a desktop form enclosure you will need to look at a comms cabinet i've got a link to one down in the description so that you can slot this in it screws in and all the cables feed in behind so that it's all nice neat and tidy and potentially out the way in a cupboard you might already have a comms cabinet or a storage area that you use for your comms it should go in there because this does kick out some noise the amount of hardware that's in here and the fan system you don't want this primarily next to your editors you want this somewhere else in a comms cabinet so that it's all nice neat tied it away now if you are looking at this as an upgrade for your network and you want to go to 10 gigabit which is fantastic i cannot recommend it enough but there is a cost involved and it's only when you are at this sort of level that you can look at going at a 10 gigabit connection because you need to make sure that your network switch your cabling and your computers are all capable of accepting that 10 gigabit connection but there are things that you can do with computers you can buy 10 gigabit network cards you can buy adapters like the qnap adapter and all the links to these down in the description it is an investment but it's an investment that is going to be so worth your while with the efficiency that this brings this is working smarter and not harder [Music] okay so you've got all of these bays to fill no matter which nasa you're going with the only hard drive range that i can really recommend is the iron wolf drive series from seagate they are a fantastic range of hard drives they will not let you down they are versatile they are reliable and they are fast now i've got some links to the ones that i prefer the 16 terabyte is a great option for most nasa's and they do do some ssds as well the prices are punchy shall we say but they are worth it if you are investing and you do not want to have issues further down the line get the right hardware now write in the comments below if you agree with me but for me this is the only way to go with your nas storage so that kind of covers everything to do with nazis which one you should look at why it's better for your workflow and let me know if this video was helpful in any way with your decision of whether to switch to a nas if so which nest you're going to go with and how it's working out for you remember like this video subscribe if you haven't already hit that bell notification and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Digi Pro Tips

Views: 20,535

Keywords: best nas for video editing, best hard drive for video editing, ssd for video editing, synology nas 2 bay, synology raid 10, synology 4k, synology hdd, nas system, best synology nas, synology nas, synology drive, synology nas drive, Synology diskstation, synology, ironwolf, ironwolf nas, ironwolf synology, shared storage for video editing, synology rackmount nas, 10g network, qnap, synology raid

Id: NtUZ0Syruvw

Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021