Working on a project for a television production where everything is SAN-based. Multi-camera video feeds with embedded audio recording to the SAN where the editors can grab the files immediately, much like we do on the Conan show, except this will be for many hours.
I just tested a Mac Nuendo setup doing this and it was flawless recording to a network drive. Does anyone have any experience using Nuendo on a PC and recording to a NAS drive? It’s probable that these systems will all be PC based. I have a Nuendo PC but I don’t have any NTFS NAS devices at the moment - may have to go buy one for testing.
When I opened this thread, I thought you were going to report slow save times, or lag issues.
I haven’s used and sans with my PC rig but I have read there were sluggish issues when using network storage. I didn’t remember exactly what type of storage system that was attached though. Perhaps a search may reveal this. Perhaps these were localized to the smaller “all in one” devices that don’t have the i/o performance a robust san device has?
Thanks for the response. I actually was surprised at how smoothly the Mac version did this. I suppose I’ll put some storage on a PC laptop or something, open it for sharing, and see how well that works. Seems like the most likely imitation.
There is such a huge range of NAS performance available. I have mixed projects stored on network drives and servers and for 24 to 32 track projects it seems fine, but have not recorded to them - seems risky, but I used to think that recording to hard drives was risky as well.
I was looking at some specs for iSCSI NAS systems and those seem to perform much better (some better than a USB or Firewire drive) than accessing them as “network servers” - same box - and many of the NAS devices can be used simultaneously as servers and iSCSI. Although there is a big difference in using a system as iSCSI versus as a Server: iSCSI looks to the computer like a locally attached drive and the data area on the NAS for a given computer cannot be shared with other computers (unless shared by the computer it is local to) whereas in server mode the files on the NAS can be shared and accessed by other computers on the network. Most NAS devices are UNIX based or Windows based file servers packaged as ready to go. Some are amazingly robust with dual, teamed Ethernet ports and redundant power supplies.
There’s a site called smallnetbuilder.com that has some decent info and compiled charts showing the range of NAS device performance as both servers and iSCSI.
A SAN system is more similar to iSCSI (SAN could even be using ISCSI to attach storage) than it is to NAS except that SAN systems are attached to servers rather than individual computers and SAN performance is usually in a different league for now - as is the cost - for now.
Hi Hugh, this is my experience.
I work with large projects directly on a NAS system, since the Nuendo 3.2.
I never missed a file, and the system is a rock solid in a post production environment heavy used.
I have six Nuendo (5.5.2) clients based on:
HP XW6200 dual Xeon 3.2, 4GB ram, W7-32, 80GB HD for OS and Programs, 500GB HD for local storage, 1GB Intel network card, AES-32 RME, Nvidia Quadro video card.
-The NAS is an EON storage system 8TB (4TB in raid0) driven by an HP Proliant server (ws2003, 1GB ram) via a dual channel 320UW SCSI card. It provide all Audio (48 kHz, 16 or 24b) and video (H264 mpeg4 25Ft)
The network core is an HP Procurve 2424, all wiring CAT5e (shielded) our max length is 50mt from NAS machine room to Clients machine rooms.
Our workflow:
Dubbing: 2 Nuendo clients, 12 tracks a project directly to NAS both recording and playing
Post: 4 Nuendo clients, directly to NAS editing and playing. The project (created from an AAF file 16 channels, generated by our Avid Unity system) ranging from 20 to 40 tracks at the end of editing process, 52 minutes length.
The maximum network bandwidth used from each Nuendo client range from 1% in play to 5% in edit mode or jump from point to point.
