QNAP mounting for video editing

[Enquiries]

Hello NAS Compares!

Thank you so much for your videos and help.

I work for a production company as a video editor and we recently upgraded our system to a QNAP TS-453BT3 connected to an M4 Mac Studio running macOS Sequoia. They are connected directly with 10GB ethernet. We use Premiere Pro to edit feature documentaries with our project files and footage all stored on the QNAP.

The problem I'm having is Premiere is taking multiple hours to access the files (what it calls "relinking media&quot every time I open a project. Once the project is open and relinked the speeds are fine but the opening time is crazy. Our old system (Drobo to Mac Studio) opened and relinked the same projects within a few minutes every time.

I'm wondering if there is anything I can do to speed up my read speeds, I read online about mounting the NAS as NFS instead of SMB (how it is mounted by default)? What would you recommend for our situation? Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks so much!

[ed]

Thanks for reaching out, and glad you find the videos useful!

Your setup with the QNAP TS-453BT3 connected directly to a Mac Studio over 10GbE sounds great for video editing, but the long Premiere Pro relinking times are definitely frustrating.

For your workflow, I’d actually recommend trying iSCSI instead of SMB or NFS. iSCSI allows your Mac to connect to the NAS storage as if it were a local drive, which usually results in much faster and more consistent performance — especially important for heavy video editing with large project files.

Here are a few suggestions:

Set up iSCSI on your QNAP:
QNAP supports iSCSI targets and LUNs out of the box. You can create an iSCSI target on the NAS and connect to it from your Mac using an iSCSI initiator like the free “GlobalSAN iSCSI Initiator” for macOS.

Performance benefits:
With iSCSI, Premiere Pro will see the storage as a block device rather than a network share, which can greatly reduce relinking times and improve overall read/write speeds.

Network setup:
Make sure your 10GbE network is properly configured with static IPs and jumbo frames enabled if possible to maximize throughput.

Backup and cache considerations:
Still consider local cache or proxy workflows within Premiere Pro to help with editing responsiveness.