Multicam Editing Tips

[Terry Barnum]

Any downsides to setting the Motion templates location to an external location? We use a QNAP NAS and I thought I recalled reading something (which I can’t find now) about not setting the Motion templates location to the Library if it’s external. A problem only on older versions perhaps?

-Terry

[Oliver Peters]

[Terry Barnum] “I recalled reading something (which I can’t find now) about not setting the Motion templates location to the Library if it’s external”

Setting to external is fine as long as you are the only one editing. If the library gets moved around, then having them external runs the risk of not having the templates come along. Internal avoids that. However, personally, I haven’t had good luck with FCPX Libraries on QNAP. Media is fine, but I keep all the other things local.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Terry Barnum]

Thanks for the response Oliver. I’m curious about the problems you’ve experienced with Libraries on the QNAP. Are you connecting via 10GbE or TB? We’ve been editing long-form projects with 1-2 editors on it via 10GbE for nearly a year and it’s been pretty stable, no issues that I could say are specifically caused by working off the NAS. Infrequently, FCPX quits, but I chalk that up to FCPX.

-Terry

[Oliver Peters]

[Terry Barnum] “I’m curious about the problems you’ve experienced with Libraries on the QNAP.”

Extremely sluggish performance and lots of spinning beachballs. We are 10GbE through a switch with 9 connected workstations. Media is fine, it’s the Libraries and how FCPX works with these files. Conversely, we have no issues with Premiere Pro project files on QNAP.

We also have a Jellyfish, which has become our main storage. It’s better optimized for FCPX and I can run with Libraries on Jellyfish. However, all things considered, FCPX works best when the Libraries are local on very fast drives, because the app is constantly writing updates to the Library file.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Joe Marler]

[Oliver Peters] “Extremely sluggish performance and lots of spinning beachballs. We are 10GbE through a switch with 9 connected workstations. Media is fine, it’s the Libraries and how FCPX works with these files. Conversely, we have no issues with Premiere Pro project files on QNAP.

We also have a Jellyfish, which has become our main storage. It’s better optimized for FCPX and I can run with Libraries on Jellyfish. However, all things considered, FCPX works best when the Libraries are local on very fast drives, because the app is constantly writing updates to the Library file.”

Sequential reads dominate the I/O profile of typical video apps, which is easier for a NAS to handle. However FCPX is using a SQLite database which entails lots of small random I/Os. Somehow Lumaforge has cracked that code and uses clever caching to give good performance, unlike a QNAP.

Premiere project files must have a more traditional I/O profile. Resolve can either use a “disk database” (apparently a flat file) or a PostgreSQL client/server database on the same machine or a server.

It would be interesting to evaluate the I/O performance of Resolve configured for a local PostgreSQL database with that storage redirected to a NAS. That would be the closest equivalent to what FCPX does.