FreeNAS for Video Editing?

[richcamp]

I am a video editor, using a new imac. External cases are expensive but I have a ton of internal drives. I was curious about using a FreeNAS box for this. Anyway to hook the box up to my computer and use for video editing? Or am I better off using attached drives and just backing up to FreeNAS?

I'm new to the idea of FreeNAS and just want to make the most of it. Thank you!

 

[pirateghost]

Why couldn't you use the FreeNAS box to edit videos? I don't understand the issue. You use it over the network, not via USB or any other direct connection. You can connect to network shares and do whatever you like with the files.

 

[richcamp]

I was curious about speeds vs USB3 or something. I've never used NAS or anything before, always firewire, usb3 type drives.

 

[pirateghost]

My recommendation is to try it out. We obviously cannot determine what your needs are or if it will fit with your workflow. Over gigabit network, it is fast enough for me to do what I want, but you might have different expectations or needs.

 

[John M. Długosz]

Gigabit connection speeds are no longer as fast as newer desktop SATA drives, especially if you partition it and only use the fast end.

Having the input on the same drive as the output (e.g. when rendering) kills performance, and using the NAS as the second drive is far better than not if you don't have two internal drives. For encoding, writing the result to the NAS is just fine and dandy.

I've not actually benchmarked the video editing case; I didn't duplicate my encoding task to see the difference, and interactive editing is hard to benchmark. I've put my impressions and hard measurements on this page.

 

[russnas]

well for imac, it would be thunderbolt>Ethernet>usb 3.0, Ethernet would be best, usb 3.0 controller is terrible for video editing, mac alternatives for thunderbolt and usb home servers are expensive, your better off making one,

i didnt notice this thread is old, i was looking up info about cifs and i got side tracked as i just looked up this question on another forum a few days ago.

 

[cyberjock]

You just responded to a thread from 3 weeks ago.... ;)

 

[dvc9]

Since some still may wonder, and some do search the forums.

We use FreeNAS for Video editing with over 4 Video editing suits, 8 AvidProtools suits and some online and grade. and it works like a charm,
but do spend some money on a Freelancer, a vendor, or iXsystems for tuning up and configuration.
there is a lot of small things that can change the system drastically.