Network Storage

[UlfLaursen]

Hi,

Do you guys import media into your project directly from network storage, or do you copy from storage to local drive first?

I have several PC's and some media, intros / outros etc. I use for many different projects, and I would like to keep them in one place to use on all my PC's.
To do this I have ordered a 'ready NAS' from Netgear. All my PC's are running gigabit.
What would you advise me to. Import directly from the NAS or to copy to local drive at first.

Thanks.

/Ulf

[STORMDAVE]

Depends on what kind of footage you're editing. I use my second edit station as storage as well via a direct gigabit connection, works fine for DV and compressed HD.

[UlfLaursen]

Thanks Dave,

It's DV or HDV, so I think it will be fine too - I'll give it a go when I get my NAS.

/Ulf

[rando]

I have found that a NAS drive is not nearly fast enough for any kind of video. For some reason its fine when played from a server(computer) but if its like a LACIE NAS drive you will only get like 10 mps even with a gig connection.

[UlfLaursen]

Thanks Rando. I'll post some results when I get mine.

Thanks.

/Ulf

[STORMDAVE]

Did you guys try to mess with the network settings? Use "Jumbo frames" etc? I use direct gigabit connection (with a crossover cable, bypassing a router) and I get very fast datarates. Theoretically gigabit is like this:

1000 megabits = 125 megabytes


But in reality, it should be actually around 70MB-90MB/sec capable with overhead.

So if your NAS has RAID0 with 2 drives striped, you should be able to utilize the connection to the max.

[rando]

Dave,
Are you using a server or just a NAS drive? I used to have a old dual 3.4 that I want using so I set it up as a server. it worked great so I though any NAS would be great I then bought a Lacie NAS drive. It was really slow not fast enough for DV let alone HD. then I bought a mac mini and put a firewire drive on it I shared that and used it as a sever and it was great. It has something to do with having a machine behind it, maybe it needs a processor or memory.

[STORMDAVE]

My Storm system is also a network server :)

Mess with the NAS settings, it shouldn't be THAT bad. It should be faster than FireWire400.

[rando]

oh ya see you have a computer behind it, I thought I would be fine too until I bought this.
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10882
Its speed was terrible, When I talked to Lacie they said thats the way it works. Other NAS solution may be better.

[rando]

oh ya see you have a computer behind it, I thought I would be fine too until I bought this.
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10882
Its speed was terrible, When I talked to Lacie they said thats the way it works. Other NAS solution may be better. I just took the 2 500s out of my encloser and put them in my tower now there great!:)

[Raja]

I use NAS devices for backups for data, etc. Even file copying is slow on them so I have never even bothered trying to run DV from it. I have Buffallo and Dlink gigabit NAS devices.

Install external eSata drives locally and share them. Map drives from each PC to the other PCs using the same drive letter as the local drives. You will then be able to open ANY project from ANY PC no matter where the DV files are stored. Works very fast.

[UlfLaursen]

This sounds very interesting Rando - I got my NAS now and will try it out too.

/Ulf

[GrassValley_BH]

@Raja:
Either you have a really bad switch (if it lists 802.3 in the specs that's a bad sign) that doesn't have a full 2 Gigabit switching fabric (this is the total bandwidth the switch can handle point-to-point), you have poor cables (full gigabit does require at least Cat5), or your network cards aren't running Gigabit.

You may even have a bad switch - I had one of my switches go bad. Started randomly dropping packets. Try a local ping.
ping some local IP address -n 1000
and see if there are any lost packets. There should be 0 lost if it's a local IP like another one of your machines or the internal IP of your router.

You might also want to try switching your network interfaces to Half Duplex and see if that helps.

I run DV and much higher-bandwidth over gigabit connection all the time at home.

[Raja]

@Raja:
Either you have a really bad switch (if it lists 802.3 in the specs that's a bad sign) that doesn't have a full 2 Gigabit switching fabric (this is the total bandwidth the switch can handle point-to-point), you have poor cables (full gigabit does require at least Cat5), or your network cards aren't running Gigabit.

You may even have a bad switch - I had one of my switches go bad. Started randomly dropping packets. Try a local ping.
ping some local IP address -n 1000
and see if there are any lost packets. There should be 0 lost if it's a local IP like another one of your machines or the internal IP of your router.

You might also want to try switching your network interfaces to Half Duplex and see if that helps.

I run DV and much higher-bandwidth over gigabit connection all the time at home.

Hi BH,
Thanks for your input.
I think you must have misunderstood my reply. My Network is Gigabit and it runs fine. I use Cat6 cabling, 3Com Office Connect switches, running Full Duplex (2GB), am running Gigabit on all PCs/ports. All is running very fast and fine.

My point was that I've found NAS devices (especially the Buffalo) to be slow for file copying. It must be something to do with the embedded OS control or something They're fine for backups and thats what I use them for.

Hope I've cleared up the confusion.

Cheers

[GrassValley_BH]

My point was that I've found NAS devices (especially the Buffalo) to be slow for file copying. It must be something to do with the embedded OS control or something They're fine for backups and thats what I use them for.

Ahh, okay... Yes, that can be quite true. Depends on the device. Many are "general purpose" embedded systems that have been set up for NAS, versus systems designed for NAS.

Just because it has a Gigabit port doesn't mean it'll be Gigabit speed. :)