Work Flawlessly with Remote Video Editors: FINALLY. My NAS Storage Workflow for Video Production!
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- For years, I’ve struggled with a solution that could help my video team in multiple locations collaborate more efficiently and without headaches. I finally found something that works. Meet the Synology Diskstation NAS system! No more slow transfers, lost files, or headaches. The Synology Diskstation NAS is the answer every video production team needs.
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I work as a full time editor for a company in an area I’m not super happy about. I might bring this up to them when I move away so I can still work for them but not have to live in the same town as my job. Thanks Scottie!
Glad to help
It definitely works well, and I think they'd see that as well if they got it hooked up.
Thanks for that angle on this topic. I'm just arriving to storing all my media, but that multiple video editor thing is a good idea! Thanks again!
Thanks for this great explanation. It's really helpful. I'm doing video editing purely as a hobby but storage is always an issue and I've been going through all the stages: using external drives, then getting bigger and bigger SSDs to the point I didn't know anymore what is what, and now finally considering a Synology NAS.
Great. That sounds like a good plan.
This is a bit late, but Scott is leaving out a lot of what you'd need for this setup to work properly to edit with files on a NAS. You need to have AT LEAST 2.5gb ethernet connection from your NAS to your device. Most home networks do not have this capability. You can work around that by connecting the 10Gbe directly to your computer. This video shows you that process: ua-cam.com/video/2CY-FnQvuEs/v-deo.html
I had a similar problem, but I went a different route. I used an OpenVPN server on the Synology NAS to connect remote clients. On the client side they map network drives just as easy as if they are on the same LAN. On a fast internet connections, it works great!
I do backup to another Synology NAS that is off premise and locally to external drives.
Sounds like a nice option.
Enjoyed the video. Appreciate your taking the extra time to test theory before posting a video about it. Also, your view on Apple's need to incorporate collaboration into FCP is spot on.
Glad you enjoyed the video. Yes. Apple needs to do something about this for sure. They are all about the collab with their products and fcpx has none of it.
Great video!!! Been using a Synology nas since 2016 and it’s a life saver!
Changing lives over here man! Great video thanks for the info
Glad it was helpful.
Scott, you seem so professional. The server was a must have for a post work flow, but I still don't get why you're using FCPX in 2024 for a professional workflow. Apple's whole idea with FCPX was to get out of the professional space. It's for individuals now. Obviously Avid is still the industry standard for this exact reason. Teams anywhere in the world can work seamlessly together. This video was a year ago, so I assume you've moved on from FCP? Let me know. Premiere seems to be really on top of where the industry is going now. Avid is dying, but still the best for pro collaboration. I just went freelance from being a post house editor forever and this was a big help. Love to see how you're running your business. Congrats.
When it comes to the type of work we do, and the amount of content we produce for companies, nothing even comes close to FCPX. There’s nothing faster than FCPX in terms of organization, speed, computer efficiency, etc. Obviously there are pros and cons with any editing software, but nothing comes close in terms of speed. There’s no debating it. I would never want to use Avid. It feels like you’re using an NLE from 1950. It’s terribly outdated and bad. Premiere Pro has some nice features but still can’t compete with Speed. It’s also very hard to justify the insane price point for Premiere Pro. The fact that you have to pay monthly for every single user is just not worth the headache of a software that still has crashing problems, organizational problems, and lacks the speed of FCPX. That’s why we still haven’t moved on from FCPX
nice had this up a while,
got thru it nicely to see. thanks,
Mon 25.4.24
17:42pm
Very cool. Remote is the future.
Definitely.
I would really love an in depth set up video along with how you organize your footage. Also are your editors editing directly off of their NAS?
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep that in mind.
@@scottmckenna I would also love to see this.
Yes- agreed- I third that. :) Would love to see that- especially the syncing and how it all works with editors sharing files across systems… do you have to re-link the files everytime you open the FCP proect if you’re remote editor has worked on it?
Thank you so much for this info!
Glad it was helpful.
Brilliant video Scott! Keen to build one out and follow this workflow.
It's been working great for me.
Hey man. We have a Synology NAS setup in the office, with our remote editors running off SSD's that are connected via the Synology drive client to the cloud, so no need to have a big NAS in everyones home. Have you looked into this? and if so what was your reasoning for not going that route?
Hey Callum, are you folks Mac or Windows based? For Mac it only synchs a folder on the internal hard drive, at least according to this video ua-cam.com/video/iUxuiCLuj70/v-deo.html&ab_channel=SpaceRex Thanks!
Instead of keeping the files inside the project, why don't you just keep them inside folders outside of the project and when you import then into the library, just keep files in the same place. That way different people can still access the different video files.
This is a game changer for us. Thanks for breaking it down!
It’s been huge for us as well.
Finally. yes Ive just got a 1821+ and its awesome happy to see how you set it up. Out of interest why didn't you use SHR instead of Raid 5?
I let them help me set it up and that’s what we went with I believe. Can’t remember exactly.
SHR's purpose is mainly for when you want to mix and match drives. It creates partitions to fill up the unused sections of the drives. if you are mixing and matching drives it can be handy to give you more space, however it does come at a performance cost.
@@traviswilliammatte4104thanks for sharing, what's the performance cost?
So if I have 18tb HDD, x 4, would be faster to use raid5 instead of shr?
Since I'm not mixing drives with different sizes
Hey Scott great video! How would it affect your workflow if the remote editor doesn't have a NAS in their home? Would they still be able to edit directly from the main NAS stationed in the studio while at home?
in order to do it the way that I'm doing it, I'm pretty sure that they need to have a NAS in their location as well, but I could be wrong. I think in order to have speeds fast enough for that kind of footage though, they have to have a Nas downloading footage to them as well.
They don’t necessarily have to have a nas in their location (remote editor), to enable this they have to mount the shared folder as a drive on the machine they are editing with and this should give them access to the updated files. I would do a bit more research about the way you share files using this process. I use the shared folder to receive and share audio files with a fellow sound engineer.
Hi Scott great video. One question. Does this still work with one NAS. Could remote editors use without a NAS at their location?
Not the way we do it. They have to have their own NAS to edit it from it. If you just wanted them to be able to pull files from the NAS, then yes. But we edit off of the NAS.
Hi Scott, are u still very happy with this NAS setup as I was looking into the DS1522+?
Yea. Still working great for us.
@@scottmckenna Thanks, thats great to know. Love your videos by the way. I'm considering my first NAS to be the DS1522+
My storage needs would be about 10 TB per year.
Previously I was using 4x 8TB drives with the OWC Thunderbay 4 DAS but feel the pressing need for a NAS instead.
Q1: So would I be right in getting 16 TB drives?
Q2: Which drives are NOT loud (I can't afford Synology drives): Ironwolf non-Pro or Pro.... or maybe WD RED NAS?
For remote editors... do they have to sync a folder to the local machine? or do they work on a remote folder? I wish you showed the actual folders/app.
A shared folder on the server is synced to each individual NAS depending on what I want them to access.
So I may be slightly confused. I have a Diskstation 1522+, and I want my editor to be able to be able to work from home. You mentioned that you got your editors each their own unit, so is your main unit going to those other units somehow? Maybe I just didn’t understand the first part of the video when you’re talking about it ha ha
Shared folder. You set it up in the Synology server. Then the other drives sync back and forth to that shared folder.
@ can they access it without having to use a web browser?
Making sure to use the affiliate link in this one. Thanks!
@15:00 - I don't understand. Your remote editor edits straight onto the Synology NAS? Or does she downloads the footage and edits locally and then uploads the project file?
If she loads that NAS as a network drive and edits from that- then it should be super snappy. I don't know if this could happen if you have that NAS, say, in Europe. I guess she lives quite near you, then...
I barely see any feedback by NAS /Synology users about accessing this NAS data remotely...Most seem to use this NAS locally...in house.
Is there no way to just get 2 20TB drives and be done with it? Let's say I'm just working solo?
That’s not how you want to run a raid. Then you don’t have backups with drive failure.
you should have 80tb with raid 5
Thanks for the video. Are you editing full res video files via the network or are you using proxies and do you connect your computer to the NAS directly via ethernet? Thanks.
Great video! One comment....if you have 6 x 16 TB in RAID5 then you have 80TB of usable.
I bet he has set up a RAID10
Great video!
Thanks for sharing! How fast is your internet at home and is there a recommended internet speed?
So does it allow for your editors to edit directly off the NAS using proxies? I’m assuming the original media wouldn’t work well in 4K or bigger file sizes via network? Maybe I’m missing a step that answers this…
Why would you need separate nas drives on the editor side ? You could just have the main nas at the studio upload the footage and send download link and upload link to the editor.
Hi Scott, great video. Do you use ProRes or ProResRAW footage, or is it all H.265 and H.264? Cheers!
H264
would've been nice if you had shown diagram/video of the synology remote setup?
Scott, thanks, good, sincere advice.
Do u work with smb shares or do u use synology drive to place local copies on the editors pcs?
Synology drive share sync
Hey Scott thanks for the video! Curious if you've ever experimented with proxies or files that 'self destruct' or become unusable after a set amount of time?
If editors download sensitive files, it would be great to have the piece of mind knowing they become useless after a period.
Not something that’s important to me so I’ve never tried.
Thanks, Scott, for such an insightful video. I have been thinking of ways to have my editors edit remotely. I wonder, if I do not have the budget to supply my editors with a NAS to station at their residence, do you think that having all of them install Synology drive app on their laptop and have it actively sync files with one Synology located at the office will be possible?
Not sure. I've never tried it so I can't say for sure.
Here is just one of several excellent videos from SpaceRex on using a Synology NAS for video editing. This one is about how you would sync the NAS's : ua-cam.com/video/togY3hr_hv0/v-deo.html NASCompares also has some really good videos on the subject.
Thanks!
you sound like bird person and I love it
I've been waiting for this lol
Here you go.
i just stumbled across your video, wow, this could be a solution for us.
can the editor be anywhere? or does he/she have to be in the same place as his/her NAS? i would love to see a real world scenario test somewhere in a café or so 🙂
Technically anywhere there is internet. A cafe would work if the internet was strong enough, but that's not necessarily how it's designed. It's best to be at a stable internet connection in an office or something.
I’m lost and confused 😊. Video production company? Podcasts? High pressure cleaning? Bakery?
None. It all sucks.
Long time editor who's new to this tech. Did you need to add the optional 10G Ethernet module or were you able to do all your network transferring as they were out of the box? Did you add SSDs, too? Thanks.
I don't have the switch, and I haven't had any problems.
Questions:
1. What’s the best way you’ve found to archive your files to Google Drive? Do you just use their interface or are you syncing the files from your NAS somehow?
2. Are you editing directly from the NAS or downloading the files, editing, then reuploading to the NAS?
1. We use Dropbox now to archive all our files.
2. We edit directly from the nas. We never download anything from there.
Thanks for sharing Scott. This seems like a great workflow for a lot of production companies. I have a QNAP NAS but its Thunderbolt which allows for reasonably fast read/write speeds. Do you not have any issues with the hard drive speeds for editing directly off these? I think you also mentioned editing the projects wirelessly with WIFI that seems really tough unless maybe they're all Proxies or you're all on M1/M2s.
I'll make another video about this. We edit off of everything wirelessly with no issues at all. Even Multicam productions. We are all on M1 Max's and Pros, so I'm not sure how much that plays a factor or not.
@@scottmckenna Taylor here with Filmspire. Gosh, I would really love to see a video on that. I also have QNAP NAS that has Thunderbolt but the issue is that QNAP Thunderbolt connections to Mac are notoriously unreliable. Which makes it nearly impossible to edit off of. When it works, it works great but there are many times where the connection won't work. Apparently, it's an Apple/Mac issue.
please give more info on that, how do you edit all wireless?
Thnx!
Great video!
Glad it was valuable for you.
Hey Scott :D This was super helpful!
Glad it was helpful!
hello, great video. I have a question. lets say I have my nas drive with all the footage and finalcut projects in a location A. and if I go to somewhere else, lets say location B, will I be able to edit the videos remotely through the internet connection without any nas server in location B?
I believe you can do it that way, but I haven't tried it.
You can probably achieve this by using a VPN to the network hosting the NAS
Hiw do you remotwly edit on the laptop or on a remote server?
We don't remotely edit on the server. All of our editing is done on the same network as the servers, but each person has their own server on their own network at their home.
Thanks! just want ask have you testing editing 4k video using nas ?
All we shoot is 4k so that’s all we edit. No problems.
Hello! I would like to ask, how did you set up more than 2 servers to do 2-way sync? I've tried to do research about this and seems like you solved this problem, but is it possible to ask how did you specifically do it?
It's pretty simple. It's just done with the Share Sync on the server. You set up a shared folder on the main one, and you connect to the shared folder on the others. As long as all your settings are correct, it works flawlessly.
Thank you very much for the reply! So does it work like this: you have the main server NAS A, remote employee with NAS B and another remote employee NAS C, both B and C can edit/delete/create files and they sync from the server (A) to all B and C? I've undestood that it would work only 1-way if you have more than 2 NAS but this shouldn't be the case if you can edit using more than 2 NAS? @@scottmckenna
@@starimage2 Anything that's done on the shared folder anywhere, is synced to everyone everywhere else. So if Employee with NAS B opens up a file, and does video editing to it, all the other NASs are getting all those changes and can see them instantly. If I put tons of new files overnight onto the NAS, all the other NAS locations are downloading all those files automatically over night, and they are accessible immediately to that editor first thing when they access the computer. It's great.
Thank you very much! Apparently I've misunderstood something, this should be then very easy to configurate. Thank you!
@@scottmckenna
Scott, we currently share (through synology gofile browser links to clients) large video files in the GB's to external users to download. What happens often, is that the client complains that the download gets interuppted, slow and unsuccessful. What advice would you recommend to send successully to external users to access content on Synology?
We do not share files through our Synology at all. We use Frame.IO and Google Drive for that. Our synology is ONLY used for what I mentioned in this video.
Are you seriously telling me that you edit wirelessly!? Are you using 4K footage? I am looking into this for my employer and this is amazing if true! I would think you would need to be hard wired at a 10gig connection in order to cut 4K or larger footage. Your editors download to their mini-server...edit it wirelessly at their location and then just push the edit files ie: project file...xmls...graphics etc back up to your main server at office? So do they just delete their local video files to keep their mini-server from getting loaded or bogged down?
Very interested in this process...it would help us out so much. Thanks for the great info.
Correct. All of my editors and I edit wirelessly from the NAS, with no ethernet connected. We've been doing it since we made this video, and still to this day. Works great. No downloading or uploading anything manually. When they make edits, it uploads changes to the server, and when new things get edited by someone else, it downloads to their servers. No manual work at all.
All of our NAS systems are mirrored so they don't delete files or anything to keep their systems from being bogged. They all have 32TB each on their NAS which we've never even come close to using. Once we are done using files, I store them locally to a slow backup hard drive at the home office, and remove them from the server.
10G FO is needed for CATIA. I can't understand that you're in Pennsylvania. OMG. IYKYK.
Hello thanks for video.
Is not clear how you can access to your libraries on the server from remote and not from the home lan. Could you explain it? Thank you
I saw this asked in the comments with no answer, but would LOVE an answer to it. Can you edit 4k files through the network storage without an issue? Or do you have to use a proxy workflow because the network connection can't keep up with 4k files? That's really the deal breaker with my company so if I know you can edit 4k files with no issues here, I'm game!
We film everything in 4k and edit in 4k with no issues at all. Including multi cam.
@@scottmckenna man thank you for answering this 🙏
Are you using the native Synology Drive app or you upload using the web GUI?
Native app
Actually are you referring to uploading files to it? We don’t use any app. The drive simply shows up like an external hard drive on our computers.
@@scottmckenna Yes, I was referring to the uploading of your videos to the NAS. Are you on a VPN in order for your Mac to see the drive?
I think we are going to do this as well but trying to figure out the technical steps to make it work.
@@joeriley192 We just connect to the server wirelessly through the finder (Go-Connect to Server). We type in the IP and it connects, then it shows up like an external hard drive and we just access it through there. When we are importing brand new footage to the server, we have a desktop setup where we do that since it has all the SD card readers connected to it. That computer is also connecting wirelessly though as well. Not hard wired.
@@joeriley192I agree with the question. I don’t understand how he can access from remote to nas files
It’s why after 20 years I’m switching from FCP to Resolve. Apple the first to introduce collaboration except for FCP is the only application that truly needs collaboration. And if I switch then I eventually will switch my phone as well. And could possibly move to a less expensive PC. Sad but I don’t know what Apple is waiting for?
Da vinci resolve works greatly on MacOs, no need to move to PC
Thanks mate
What app is synching the main NAS with the remote NAS?
Interesting but there was this moment where I suddenly thought - wait a minute is this sponsored by Synology. Why does a remote editor working alone in their home need a NAS? What is the difference between this approach and just having a big local drive of anykind and Dropbox to share and sync a folder?
We used the google drive/dropbox setup for awhile, and it’s such a hassle. The upload speeds and download speeds from those services are far slower than something like a dedicated NAS believe me. Regardless of how fast your internet speed is, those services still limit your speed uploads and downloads. It’s not a sustainable way to work if you’re working with multiple editors in multiple locations. The NAS setup has been such a better setup for us.
This is awesome!!!!
How can everyone access the NAS wirelessly? to edit 4k footage you really need 10GB ethernet speeds
Each editor have teir own NAS locally, and they are synchronized with de NAS were the footage is uploaded, after the process of synchronization is done they access the footage in theyr local NAS with a Ethernet cable
I wasn’t able to see in your video but when your editor is editing video at her home away from the server, does her computer need to be connected to the internet via Ethernet cable?
No. Her routes is hard wired to the NAS itself, but she accesses the server wireless over WIFI.
hey, is it possible to just have the one drive at your home and then editors can remotely access it and just download footage onto one of their local external drives and work off of that. The only thing they would have to do is just upload project files and final video.
Yes, you can access the server itself from a web browser and simply download files you need (similar to google drive or dropbox). The advantage of them having their own server is that it can download and remotely sync files without them thinking about it.
Thank you, I really appreciate it.
@@scottmckenna
What bandwidth speeds are you deploying at each location?
Hi Scott, may I ask how you set up all those NAS settings to be wirelessly connected and remotely accessed, don't mention editing. I have the DS920+ too, but I can't make it work as you do. Does Synology provide some kind of customer service for that?
Reach out to them if you’re having issues. I’m not exactly sure what issues you’re having unfortunately. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.
@@scottmckenna No worries. Thanks for sharing your user experience.
Everytime I leave my house I have to access my files through the webportal and I can't find a tutorial that explanes have to have access to the network drive outside of the home base network without using the webportal. Anyone can point me to a how to video that can show me how to do that. I would very much appriciate you guys
I don’t access it through the web portal personally, so I can’t chime in here, sorry.
Is there any way to edit video from nas on android without downloading the videos as in the pc?
Not sure sorry.
Which hard drive you end up using?
I explain it all in the video
@@scottmckenna I had the same question and am sorry if I also missed it!? but all I heard regarding the drives themselves was "16TB drives" -- could you throw a timestamp at us Scott?
Can I ask, if I want others to upload footage to my NAS system remotely is that possible? Meaning can I send out a link to a client who has footage for me to edit and then they can upload it to my NAS and I pull it from there?
Yes
Do they need to have a NAS as well? Or can they edit off of your NAS?
I think the ideal is that they have their own NAS so it can download the footage to their local server. If not, they'd be streaming the footage all in real time. If it 's possible, it would be much slower and unreliable I'd think. I could be wrong though. Contact Synology, and they could answer that.
If you are a solo creator in one studio I presume NAS holds no advantage and your previous OWC DAS setup is best?
I'm curious how this would work editing Prores RAW 8K footage...
I imagine it would work. Not sure about Multicam workflows, but I don't think it would have a problem depending on speeds.
thank you!!!
Glad to help
Pretty-good buts !DS1824+ or Bust!
Still have unlimited google drive? So annoyed I missed out on that.
Yes I still have unlimited.
@@scottmckenna Have to ask again... How are those new Google Workspace rules working for you now? These new updates suck.. Would love to know how you are managing that right now (feels like an emergency)
nice
this is great, but the files you are editing must be tiny. no way this makes sense for raw or prores footage. or am i missing something?
I assume they are editing against proxies. That is the way Blackmagic cloud works with DaVinci resolve and the final delivery will be against the originals which are much larger.
Would keeping the media files outside of the project solve your issue with the way Final Cut handles collaboration? Essentially, you would store all of the media in a folder for each client or for each project and then when you import it into a final cut library you “leave files in place “. I would think this would allow all of your editors to utilize the various clips and media files simultaneously for different projects. Obviously you still can’t have two people working on the same Final Cut library at the same time, but even you said that’s not necessarily something you really need to do. at least the files are not all stored inside of the final cut library file itself, which it sounds like is what was the issue
We like to keep them in the library because you never have to worry about missing media. Since we back up all the footage to Dropbox any way, editors can still access any of the files if they needed it as well for something else.
I just want an m.2 (4) bay for PCI Express NVMe 3.0 x8
Clear as mud
In a RAID 5 setup you only lose the storage of 1 drive not half of them. Sounds like you’re in a RAID 1 or 10 setup
We are using Raid 5. Basically one drive can fail from what I understand.
Thats correct
5:12 you mentioned only achieving half the storage as usable, which wouldn’t be the case with a RAID 5 setup with 6 HDDs
Oh Scott...
Hey Nathan
cries in Australian
i would have gone qnap personally
Whatever works best for you.
Or just get davinci. Recently made the switch, no regrets !
That doesn't solve the problem that this video is talking about haha.
My bad, i spoke too soon. Should have held off to the end 😅@@scottmckenna
Honestly that sounds like a massively inconvenient ball ache to deal with. There has to be a better way/workflow.
How is it inconvenient? You edit like normal and each computer works like they are working off of an external hard drive. It’s seamless.
not really a solution when you are always on the road...
Correct.
no specifics.... talking about nothing dude
Sort of like your comment.
This video is useless. Show the config.
This video wasn’t meant to explain my configuration or walk you through my settings. The video was titled “my nas storage workflow for video production”. It didn’t say “the correct configuration settings for using your nas”. I’m not tech support. This video was to explain how I use it.