Any Cloud based SAN/NAS solutions out there

[Doug Bassett]

Just saw Bob Zelin’s post on QNAP. I think maybe I’ll look into this. I’ll need initially 4 Mac (local) and 4 Mixed platform
remote (india).
Thoughts?

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Hi Doug,

Most of the brand name vendors have solutions to backup/archive to cloud services (S3, Google Drive, Backblaze, etc.), but the phrasing sounds more like you want to edit UHD ProRes remotely, what are your intended ‘cloud’ workflows?

Remote, or cloud based editorial is not really here yet. A few vendors have workarounds, most of which involve proxies because the high res media is just too large. As example, UHD ProRes 422 is going to be in the range of 80MBs, which is way more than most business internet connectivity can handle (at least in the states). We are starting to see Gigabit internet connectivity, which theoretically could sustain a single stream of that, however, then the latency conversation comes in and once again, you can’t play back.

Avid has some solutions, but are going to push you into the $150k+ USD range, if that’s within your budget, it’s worth checking out. Editshare, has some basic remote editing options, but they require you to use their NLE remotely, and it’s pretty limiting in what you can do externally. At ProMAX we have a transcoding engine built into our solution that offloads ProRes proxies (and other formats) to GPU and creates H.264 proxies (or you can specify other options) which can be sync’d or uploaded to the cloud. Then you work on proxies remotely and send the project file back to the local server.

Hope this helps, and if you can fill in more on what you want to do remotely, I’m sure myself/more people can fill in more details on good workflow/product options. You can also get a lot of good educational content from the blog post How to Create a Workflow Your Team Will Actually Use.

Keep us posted and good luck!

Nathaniel @ ProMAX

[Doug Bassett]

This is great. I was assuming the speeds were not there yet w/out proxy, just wasn’t sure. I’ve used edit share before, it just wasn’t viable for us. The EVO has been great for for the past few years so I’m leaning that way again. I do like the tape backup built into the QNAP. I wish it had a 20 Gb ethernet card as uplink so we could come from a switch.
thanks again

[Bob Zelin]

Doug writes –
I was assuming the speeds were not there yet w/out proxy, just wasn’t sure. I’ve used edit share before, it just wasn’t viable for us. The EVO has been great for for the past few years so I’m leaning that way again. I do like the tape backup built into the QNAP. I wish it had a 20 Gb ethernet card as uplink so we could come from a switch.
thanks again

REPLY – Hi Doug –
let me make this clear to you. An Apple ProRes422 HQ single stream is 20 MB/sec. That is 160 Mb/sec. Most people to not have access to this kind of bandwidth. I just did a job for Spectrum Cable (you know – the old Time Warner) – and their corporate offices are in Conneticut (Charter Communications). THEY do not have the ability to have real time playback over the internet. And they are the cable company. The way you accomplish this is to create proxy files (FCP X and Adobe Premiere do this very nicely). You put these proxy files, which correspond to your original media on Drop Box, Google Drive, Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, etc. or you use a NAS product (like a QNAP or a Synology) that will give you remote internet access. With the QNAP, I can use MyQNAPCloud or Cloudlink to remotely open a folder that holds these files, and anyone can upload and download to this folder. Once you download the proxy files, you edit the show with h.264, and send the list back to the main edit house, where they CONFORM the show in Premiere or FCP X. With the QNAP, you can also use QVPN, which allows to you actually mount the drive right onto your remote laptop – but again, you are at the mercy of the internet connection.

There is no company that manufacturers shared storage systems that can say “yes, you can edit in full res 4K right over the internet” – because none of these companies – not Adobe, not Apple, not AVID – control the cable companies or the available bandwidth. And when I see THE CABLE COMPANY can’t even (or wont even) do it for themselves – well, then you are not going to get what you want either.

Proxy workflow, and conform. That is how you accomplish what you want.

and there is no tape backup for a QNAP (if you mean LTO). There is no LTO software that works with QNAP, and there are no miniSAS ports on a QNAP that are compatible with an HP Ultrium LTO drive. When you see the backup product, its a specific Tandberg cartridge, not an LTO tape, for the QNAP.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Melvin Chong]

Your best bet will be playing your NLE timeline via NDI in the cloud (https://www.ndi.cloud/secure.html), but it won’t be ProRes quality as NDI is a highly compressed protocol. The bottleneck here is not costs but internet bandwidth on your clients side. Even if a “Cloud SAN” video playback exists, shoving high data-rates like ProRes 4K for prolonged period from the data-centre will cause network congestion very quickly within the facility itself. Don’t forget “cloud” essentially means someone else’s computers running on virtual machines, which are inherently shared resources within a server. That means there are many overheads involved in terms of CPU and network and ProRes eats CPU like nobody’s business and hogs bandwidth.