[Bob Zelin]

I just ran the exact combination that Scott is describing this morning ! 10/18/2018
new iMac Pro – T3 to T2 adaptor cable from Apple. T2 cable into AJA T-Tap. macOS 10.13.6. Current AJA driver download from the https://www.aja.com website.
SDI out from T-Tap into Flanders Scientific monitor. Without even running any software, color bars
appear on the monitor.

bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Nick –
I have not seen poor SMB performance with macOS 10.14 Mojave.
I will be more than happy to log into your system tomorrow, and take a look, if
you would like to email me your Teamviewer info.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

you have contacted tech support at Broadcom ? Not at LSI?
Your HP Z820 is an antique (I am writing you from a Z420)

You have not stated HOW many drives are in your RAID. Are you running two 8 TB drives in your RAID 0 array ?
What does Broadcom have to do with this, if this is an LSI controller ?

To run professional video systems at a resolution of ProRes 4444 2K, you should have an external RAID controller from ATTO, Highpoint or Areca with an external RAID array with EIGHT drives – and if you are talking about 16 TB, then I would have to assume from a professional that you have eight 2 TB WD or Seagate drives in an external array. But I have to ASSUME now, that you have two 8TB SATA drives from HGST, Seagate or WD inside your computer with your LSI Logic hardware RAID controller

SO- what is the answer to your question ?

You have the WRONG raid array. You bought someone’s outdated piece of junk HP Z820 with the LSI host adaptor (I hope this is not the native RAID controller on the HP motherboard !) – and you expect to compete with professional companies that are editing in ProRes 444 2K.
This requires only about 58 MB/sec at ProRes4444 at 2K 1556 . So two 7200 RPM drives “should” be able to do this – but if you are a professional – you should have an external drive array with an ATTO, Areca, or Highpoint RAID controller with EIGHT drives in an external array, and then you will have no issue.

you have not stated exactly what editing software you are using. Are you using Premiere ?

Want to get things working? – get an EIGHT BAY raid array with a HP Z8, or “old” Z840 and an Areca ARC-1883x or
ATTO R680, and eight Seagate Ironwolf drives (or WD RED Pro drives – sorry, the regular WD REDs are 5400 RPM, and the HGST series has been discontinued) – and you will be ok. If you invest in a Mac solution for Premiere or Resolve, any 2017 iMac with a Promise Pegasus T3 eight bay or G-Tech Studio XL 8 bay will work for you.

Can’t afford all this gear? – then this is my suggestion – GET A JOB, save your money, buy this equipment, and then you can have a company.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

I have already given you the correct answers. But apparently this is not enough.
The QNAP is a generic NAS product for multiple uses. Transcoding for QNAP and Synology means transcoding to h.264 so you can have your files on the web (YouTube) and play out of the HDMI port for your TV.

YOU want a specialty application – convert your RAW files to ProRes proxy so you can edit. QNAP or Synology will not do that. There are more expensive products that are shared storage systems, like from EditShare and Promax that will do exactly what you want, but you are not interested in spending $30,000 – $40,000 for their solutions. You just want to buy an NVidia GTX-1080ti, pop it into your QNAP, and have some magic menu show up, that says “transcode from this format (RED RAW, or ARRI RAW, or Blackmagic RAW) – to ProRes Proxy. WELL, you are not going to get what you want. As I explained earlier, the NVidia card install requires setting up a VM Ware Win 10 installation, and I am guessing that you are not aware what this even means. And even if you were an expert at VM Ware and setting up a virtual machine, you would need to install a transcode program from a third party company on your Win 10 VM partition to do what you want.

Our industry is a specific tiny industry – the professional video market. Most top IT people have no idea of what RAW file codecs are, or what ProRes codecs even are. Only the people in the video industry knows what this means. And lucky for you, there are specialty software companies like Imagine Products, Adobe, Apple, Divergent Media, RED and a few others that make programs to transcode from the exact formats that you want to the exact formats that you want to wind up with.

It’s my guess, that you are confused, and just want some application for free that you can run on your QNAP, without having to learn much of anything else, other than to purchase an NVidia card, download a free QNAP app, and do exactly what you want, inside the QNAP.

Well, you are not going to get what you want. Sorry.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

you connect via 10G. You can certainly connect via 40G, but it’s expensive to do this.
10G with thunderbolt 3 to 10G adaptors will give you about 1000 MB/sec, when using a Sonnet Solo 10G, and a decent QNAP like the TS-1685 or TS-1677X, loaded with drives. For Win 10 computers, you can put in 10G NIC cards from ASUS, QNAP, or Sonnet, to give you those speeds as well.

You connect via 10G, not Thunderbolt 3.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
in order to put an Nvidia GPU card inside a TS-1685 or TS-1677X, you must create a VM (virtual machine) – load Windows 10 on the virtual machine, and then run your app (like for GPU rendering). Just plugging in a card does absolutely nothing for rendering.

There is no QNAP “App” like Transcode station to convert into ProRes Proxy. However, Apple FCP X offers optimized media for free. There is also Apple Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder, Imagine Products Prime Transcoder, Divergent Media Edit Ready, Red CineX Pro, etc. These run on your Mac as a standard application.

It’s cheaper and easier to get an external eGPU box for your Mac to run something like this. And that is for rendering of specific programs. An eGPU product like an AMD Vega 64 in an eGPU box will do absolutely nothing to increase render speed of something like Adobe Media Encoder.

“why can’t things just plug in and work”

☺

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

your workstations are four 2015 iMac’s. This means they are Thunderbolt 2 computers.
You would purchase either Sonnet Twin 10G’s or Promise SanLink2’s for these to be your 10G adaptor.
They are about $500 each. If you are NOT doing 4K and 6K editing, then you can avoid this purchase at this time.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

The QNAP 10G port goes into a switch, like the QNAP QSW-1208-8C. This will give you 7 available ports to plug in 7 computers – either 1G or 10G. The switch will “split” the 10G bandwidth for you, so that all 4 editors can work at the same time.

If you have a 1G connection from each computer, and you have this 1G ethernet port going into the switch, you will get 100 MB/sec per edit computer. 100 MB/sec is plenty for any 1080i, 1080p or 720p signal, and “enough” for some compressed 4K formats. But as you get to better 4K codecs, like ProRes – you are pushing this limit, and if you don’t have enough bandwidth you will get stuttering video. How to solve this – easy – buy a thunderbolt to 10G adaptor your your Macs (thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3) – and if they are Win 10 PC’s – get a 10G NIC card for that PC, which will go into a x4 or greater PCIe slot. Then you will get crazy fast speeds to do 4K, 6K and 8K editing.
A NIC card is typically between $100 – $280 each.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

you want to spend as little money as possible, or get a “better” system.

The least expensive QNAP you can get is the TVS-873e with the QNAP QXG-10G1T 10G option card ($89 bucks). This plugs into a 10G switch (cheapest one is the QNAP QSW-1208-8C – under $600 bucks). Plug in all your computers, and you are in business. The TVS-873e is under $1300, and you need EIGHT matching drives.
HGST 6TB NAS drives are currently $180 each, and you need eight drives.

For the Synology, you need the DS1817+ (not the DS1817) and the Intel X550-T2 10G card, and the same QNAP switch I mentioned above. The DS1817+ with 8 gig RAM is $919. I don’t have a quick price on the 10G card, and you need the eight drives. After RAID 6 you will have 48 TB of usable storage.

Isn’t there anything cheaper that will work – NO.
Are there better systems for a little more money – YES.

Have more questions ? Ask away …………….. I do this every day .

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
I emailed you all of this info.
I have found just from experience that small SSD caching does nothing for these products. Of course, if you can afford to fill the entire chassis with all SSD’s – that’s amazing (that what OpenDrives does !) – but for most people, it’s too expensive to do this.

Bob Zelin

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