Can Synology Support 3-4 Concurrent Video Editors?

[Bob Zelin]

replies below –

a. Why are there no Video House Case studies on Synology? It makes me doubt if they can handle the required sustained speeds.

REPLY –
simple answer – because no one at Synology gives a damn about professional video applications.
If you go to community.synology.com, and search either for Video Editing, or my name, you will see that I have asked why no one is asking about video editing solutions, and their “expert” Michael Chang actually said that the Synology might not be fast enough to support multiple people editing in real time. This of course, is WRONG INFORMATION. Synology makes GREAT products – but they have no interest in the video industry. They never show up to video trade shows, and never promote video applications. QNAP does. This does not mean that QNAP is better than Synology – it’s just that Synology does not care. It seems like I am the only person that is willing to address pro video applications for Synology. Crazy – right ?

b. But more importantly, we’re trying to find a storage system (we need about 48TB of working space) that can easily support 3 (maybe 4 in the future) concurrent editors on Mac and PC (but we can switch to Mac if needed). The odd thing is, if we look at the costs of SNS or Jellyfish, the costs are exorbitantly higher than Synology systems for virtually the same specs on paper. We have in-house IT that would set up the raid system, but it unnerving that I’ve seen maybe 3 videos on Synology for video editors and as @bob_zelin pointed out, there isn’t any advertisement for media houses on the Synology site or in the forums. All editors are working with 1080p ProRes 422, one editor consistently works with ProRes 4k 422 on a 1080p timeline, but we want to prepare for all 3 (maybe 4) to be able to edit mixed 1080p and 4k simultaneously.

REPLY – there are many Synology products that can do this, and there are many QNAP products that can do this. And it has recently been pointed out that the new ProMax Mediahub can do this as well. A typical QNAP product that can do exactly what you want is the QNAP TVS-872XT which is $1799 (not including the eight drives). And Synology has plenty of products that can do this as well. Your in house IT department will have no clue as how to make this happen. I know how to do it, as does ProMax, SNS, Lumaforge, and plenty of other people. Your in house IT department does not know how to do this.

Any input would be of great help as we out to sea on if this is a viable option for us!

REPLY – my input – stop asking your in house IT department. That is my only advice to you.

Bob Zelin

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

[Zachary Maxwell]

Wow, thank you. This is the info we’ve been looking for! I actually saw your post asking why Synology wasn’t breaking into the video industry, and that’s why I tagged you.

That’s a good observation about them just not being interested in the video industry. It is crazy.

We’ve been in contact with SNS and Luma Forage trying to grasp what we should do. We’re lost at sea. I just can’t grasp ONE thing; why is SNS EVO 8-Bay and Luma Forge Jellyfish 7-8 TIMES the cost of a Synology setup?? I can’t seem to get a straight answer from anyone.

I brought up the project a little while ago, and so I’m tasked with doing all the research. The last thing I want to do is spend more than necessary or cheap out and cause endless headaches down the road. Our in-house IT was involved because they’re IT and we don’t know what we’re doing, so I’m having a ball trying to figure out the best solution *sarcasm*. Also, if you don’t mind humoring me… why is everyone telling us to not involve out in-house IT? Is set up for a NAS different for video than it would be for any other application?

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help,

Thank you,
Zach

[Bob Zelin]

I believe that I explained to you in my original post (perhaps I am wrong) that instead of a Synology, you can get either a QNAP system or ProMax MediaHub system for very little money, that will do exactly what you want.

Feel free to contact me. This will save you tons of money.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

AND – if you DO want to do a Synology system – I can do that for you as well. Like I said – Synology systems work quite well – IF you get the right Synology system.

Why is everyone telling you to NOT involve your IT department ? Simple – because they don’t know how to do this, and they will fail. When you purchase wonderful products from Lumaforge or SNS, and you spend all that money, you are paying for their GREAT SUPPORT, that you will not get from your in house IT department. Same with the other video companies. If you purchase a cheaper product from QNAP or Synology, then you use a contractor like me, that knows how to do this. And as I mentioned, I have recently discovered the ProMax MediaHub, which is also wonderful, inexpensive, and you can use either their support, or my support in making this work.
NOW – perhaps if your in house IT team had any interest in studying these products, attending some trade shows, and making the research calls, instead of you – then maybe they would succeed. But they obviously won’t – and you have now been stuck with this assignment. All they know is Windows Server 2016, and they can’t be bothered with anything else. This is why people like me stay employed.

Bob Zelin

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

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Zach – In response to a great question:

“We’ve been in contact with SNS and Luma Forage trying to grasp what we should do. We’re lost at sea. I just can’t grasp ONE thing; why is SNS EVO 8-Bay and Luma Forge Jellyfish 7-8 TIMES the cost of a Synology setup?? I can’t seem to get a straight answer from anyone.”

Here is why…

From 2000-2008ish it was legitimately difficult to make shared storage for video teams work. I cannot tell you the amount of hours I spent checking firmware and jumpers on individual drives back then… hundreds if not thousands. Getting systems to work “well enough” was a huge deal & commanded a $50k price tag to anyone who wanted shared storage. Back then, there were very few competitors, maybe 6 of us.

From 2008ish-Now, other people/companies saw a technology space with an interesting niche & more vendors came along. More vendors + maturing technologies = Expand capabilities – or – Lower Prices. Without any notable exceptions, video vendors expanded product capabilities because no one wanted to lower the price. As an example, this is why most of the products on the market have a ‘MAM’ option.

Around 2010 system design shifted from SAN to NAS. If you want that geeky history lesson, I did a video blog on it here.

All the while NAS vendors Synology & QNAP both built companies focused on SMB/surveillance/home networks.

Around 2015, switches/NIC/Drives/internal components became faster and less expensive. These factors allowed QNAP & Synology to start getting the performance needed for smaller video teams. So people started buying those brands because for the 1st time there was an option that wasn’t super expensive (relatively speaking).

Both QNAP & Synology have 3 advantages that none of the video focused vendors have. 1) Economy of scale, both companies in the 250-500 headcount range, vs the 10-25 range of most of the video vendors. 2) Lower cost of employees, both are based in Taiwan. Not a bad thing, but employees in Taiwan are about 1/4th the cost of employees in the US, where most of the video vendors reside. 3) Professional video is an adjacent market, not their focus. This means, they can sell at much lower margins and it’s still a win for them.

Meanwhile, video vendors have not changed their pricing model because they sell enough in corporate/edu/gov’t where pricing is not the same factor as for a smaller agencies/groups. These markets will often pay 7-8x for better support / a few extra bells & whistles (especially when it’s your budget, not your money). Let’s be honest here though, big organizations are usually lagging adopters of what works for the smaller, agile, teams that are willing to try the new stuff to make things happen. When a product works, it tends to “fall up” into the bigger companies as reputation and word of mouth spreads. The big companies just want stuff that works, and they wait until the small business owners prove it so they don’t have to take the risk. We can and do play in that market, and it’s interesting and challenging in it’s own way, but it’s not where the real fun is.

The main reason that ProMAX exists in this industry (and have since the mid 90’s) because we love the technology side of the creative space. As it became apparent that the small/medium sized teams (where most of that really cool stuff happens) have moved to generic IT tools due to pricing, we knew we needed to change.

At first we were a little bummed to admit to ourselves that the we’d gotten complacent and the market responsible for our success for the last 20+ years had begun to move on without us…But, then we shook it off and looked at what we could do with the new technologies and pricing out there and said screw it, we like you guys and we can do better. So we decided to burn down the old pricing model and keep making cool stuff for the creative teams at prices that actually make sense, and with us, you can get a system tuned specifically for video performance, built and supported directly by a team who’ve actually worked in our industry for a few decades now. We think it’s a solid offer. You can learn more here.

Nathaniel @ ProMAX

[Zachary Maxwell]

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your replies. It REALLY has helped us sort through some hard-to-find knowledge and possibly helped us avoid making needlessly large purchases. I understand you’re a contractor with the know-how to install these systems, but I simply came to the forum to gather information. Thanks again for imparting your much needed insight.

Zach

[Zachary Maxwell]

Hi Nathaniel,

Thank you for the info! It helps to have the background of why there are the price gaps and the different offers of various solutions. It will greatly help me in my search for storage. I’ll look into ProMax as a possible solution.

Thanks again,
Zach

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Sure thing, also, check out Which NAS is best for your video team? if you want to see a comparison of ProMAX vs QNAP.

For starting out in shared storage MediaHub is a great option.

Good luck with wherever you land!

N

[Patrick Donegan]

Bob:

So are you saying that the cheaper Synology boxes cannot be used for video editing?

The ones that are $600 plus the drives.

My guess is that one plugs them into the Ethernet port which is only 1 GB/s,

so is that enuf for 1080p or even 4k?

[Bob Zelin]

this is an old thread. But to answer your question – YOU ARE CORRECT – any of the $600 Synology or QNAP boxes CANNOT be used for video editing. They are junk. Want a cheap one man Synology – DS1621xs+. $1599 and add 6 matching 7200 RPM SATA drives.

Connect from your computer over 10G (get a 10G NIC for your computer. New Mac’s come with 10G, and the DS1621xs+ comes with dual 10GbE ports.

Bob Zelin