I work in a small staff (7 persons). We analyze sport videos with a dedicated software. This software basically opens a video file.
As we have tons of videos to store and share, my idea is to stop copying videos on 7 personal computers and switch to a Negear ReadyNAS so - I can work less - I can manage better the files - We can access them trough our local network - We can access them trough the internet
My question is...
Do you think it would be possible for me to access the videos without any login? I'm worried that once I set the url of the video in our software, then it wouldn't be possible to play it, because of the protected access on the ReadyNAS.
Access won't be an issue since you can setup either anonymous access to shares on a network or user accounts (with u/p) and automatically save the u/p on the local machine used. It would depned on the nature of how your team works (shared computers, or dedicated comptuers, remote profiles, etc.)...this would be for video transfers, but may not be the best way to do it. Streaming content may be a better way, but that depends on the software used. Not sure what you meant by access via URL (weblink?), since if the software uses a URL to access videos, then you'd probalby need a webserver setup for video streaming videos from your NAS (either a seperate server or directly from your NAS), eg Emby, Kodi, Plex, Mezzmo, Media Portal, etc..
The bigger issues would be, how to manage multiple users IF editing the same video? If the video is just for viewing, then this would not be an issue and there are many solutions to stream to multiple users, again it depends on the software you use to view videos.
Also getting the right NAS (and fast enough network speed) to cater for simultaneous video viewing - this would depend on the quality and size of the videos (4k - 8k, etc.), weather or not they'll be streamed or transfered.
To open a video, basically I give the location of the file to the software. The standard use is to give it a local path, but in the last weeks I started giving it the path of files that are otherwhere on the LAN, and it's working. That's why I wondered... what if I connect to the ReadyNaS and then I give the path to the video like "\\path-to-the-video"?
We analyze sport videos with a dedicated software. This software basically opens a video file.
Do you think it would be possible for me to access the videos without any login? I'm worried that once I set the url of the video in our software, then it wouldn't be possible to play it, because of the protected access on the ReadyNAS.
I'm not sure what you mean by "set the URL of the video in our software". Do you mean "enter the URL"? Also, do you mean a URL or a UNC?
If you are playing the file in a web browser (or using a URL), then you can set up the NAS to allow read (or even read-write) access over HTTP/HTTPs. Then the video can be played using https://nasname/sharename/filename (obviously substituting actual names). You will get a security exception from the browser (or the player software) when you first connect, and you will need to somehow click-through that warning. With VLC for example, you will need to click on "view certifcate" and then accept it. In the specific case of VLC, you can tell the player to accept it permanently.
If you are accessing the file with SMB (or directly from the PC drive), then you'd be using an UNC, or perhaps selecting the file from a mapped drive on the PC.
Either way, whether you need a password depends on how the NAS access controls are set up (and in the case of SMB access in Windows, what credentials you have stored in the Windows Credentials Manager on the PC).
If you planning to use SMB, you can pilot this by creating a share on one of the PCs, and seeing if your tools work when you access a video on that share from a different PC.
This part is a bit more complicated, and you should be careful about managing access here. One option is to deploy a VPN. Many routers (including Netgear Nighthawks and Orbis) have built-in support for OpenVPN. When working remotely, you'd first use OpenVPN to access your work network, and then you'd be able to work from home as if you were in the office.
How well this would work also depends on your internet speed, since you'd all be sharing that connection. For playback, the upload internet speed is what matters (and often that is less than the download speed).
Accessing via \\<path> is standard NAS access over LAN, etc. - can even mount the shares as local (network) drives if needed (say, profile mount as Z: drive when logging into the computer, etc.).
I'd also recoomend read-only anon access if there's no editing involved, it ensure no-one can delete the videos and keepts their integrity. You can then use u/p's for the admin stuff.
Thanks 🙂 We don't need video editing. We only need to play some videos with a specific software.
ReadyCloud does provide remote access, and is free. But the performance might not be enough to do what you want.
If you go forward, you could try it, and see if it works for you. But my guess is that you will need to find another way to get secure access.
How fast is your internet upload/download, and what is the approximate bitrate of the files you are playing? If you aren't sure on the bitrate, you could give us the file size and the duration (seconds) for a typical file.
Using \\<network>\ locations are good for LAN's (speed), and as mentioned above over the internet using VPN, however since VPN adds another layer and over the internet, there may be speed issues playing video without pauses.
There are also other solutions to accessing the NAS over the internet as a local drive, SFTP/FTPS is another (using s/w like mount SFTP Drive, etc.) - that way you can mount via SFTP/FTPS as long as the passwords are good enough. This may has have speed issues/pauses with playing video, but FTPS/SFTP may be better that VPN for transfering over the internet, it depeneds on the s/w used.
There are other methods to access (read only) video's that's also accessible over the internet, like running a media server (Emby, Plex, Kodi, etc.) - some of these (Emby/Plex) tend to transcode the quality depending on the speed of the connection and usually have their own interface (webpage based), so playing them through custom s/w may not be viable.
All in all, you would need to test the speed of transfer, esp for FTPS/SFTP type of mounted drive. SFTP/FTPS will give full access unless you have setup read only access on the NAS. I believe you can enable FTPS (via FTP + Security enabled) with such security, however I do not believe OS6+ has yet to implement account security with SFTP (via SSH). Both settings are in the NAS Front-view settings page. I do not recommend SFTP (via SSH), since it potentially gives full access to you NAS for anyone using it. From memory, I believe at least with FTP (Secure) you can setup read only access to the drives - but FTP on OS6+ has issues with PASV mode, etc. behind f/w routers, etc. and no settings to control/fix them.
If you can cater for it and don't mind the transcoding features of the media options, this would be the safest way to play videos as its independent of NAS access and also just to play videos. Also videos adjust according to the speed of the playing end, so buffering/stuttering shouldn’t be an issue. However, warning - you MUST get a decent CPU on the server running the media server to transcode videos, or it'll be painful.
FWIW, if I were looking to solve this problem I'd also look at using cloud storage (onedrive or google drive). Though there is a monthly charge for that, it wouldn't require any hardware investment. It also would be easier to manage, and wouldn't require as fast an internet connection in the main office.
Whether Cloud storage is cost effective depends on the amount of storage you are talking about. 2 TB of google drive storage currently costs about $100 per year.
Though in the bigger picture, there can be operational benefits in consolidating storage with a NAS. It can simplify backup (and if @webmister's firm doesn't have a good backup strategy in place now, they really should).
@Retired_Member wrote:
but FTP on OS6+ has issues with PASV mode, etc. behind f/w routers, etc. and no settings to control/fix them.
I don't know what you mean here, as both OS 4 and OS 6 allow you to set the passive mode port range. I've used both over the internet, and not run into any issues with passive ports.
There can be issues with masquerading when using FTP for both local and over-the-internet access. Those can be overcome by FileZilla, WinSCP, or other clients that have workarounds for that problem. I don't think the masquerading challenges are flaws with the ReadyNAS implementations, they are fundamental to the way the masquerading hack works.
@Retired_Member wrote:
Using \\<network>\ locations are good for LAN's (speed), and as mentioned above over the internet using VPN, however since VPN adds another layer and over the internet, there may be speed issues playing video without pauses.
There are also other solutions to accessing the NAS over the internet as a local drive, SFTP/FTPS is another (using s/w like mount SFTP Drive, etc.) - that way you can mount via SFTP/FTPS as long as the passwords are good enough. This may has have speed issues/pauses with playing video, but FTPS/SFTP may be better that VPN for transfering over the internet,
FTP/SFTP/FTPS is an unusual protocol for streaming. You'd need to download the full video for playback if you use that (or modify the software they are using to include native support for FTP streaming). I've only run into one program that uses FTPS as an actual streaming protocol, and honestly it didn't perform any better than using OpenVPN. In fact, it performed somewhat worse.
"Adding an extra layer" doesn't directly affect speed, though it does add a bit of overhead on the wire. Encrypting the VPN link does add some compute overhead, and if the router isn't up to it that could limit the transfer speed. But that isn't usually an issue today, as most routers have hardware acceleration for AES encryption (especially if they also do wifi).
More likely the internet speed will be gated by @webmister's ISP service, which is why I've asked about that a couple of times now.
Overall, a VPN is more likely to be secure than using protocols that require a lot of port forwarding, especially in a scenario where there isn't a dedicated IT person with the appropriate skills. It also gives folks full access to the office network (allowing remote printing, among other things).
@Retired_Member wrote:
There are other methods to access (read only) video's that's also accessible over the internet, like running a media server (Emby, Plex, Kodi, etc.) - some of these (Emby/Plex) tend to transcode the quality depending on the speed of the connection and usually have their own interface (webpage based), so playing them through custom s/w may not be viable.
It'd be useful to know if switching to other software is an option or not. I've been assuming that @webmister wants to continue to use their current application software, and it sounds like that currently directly reads the files from the disks. If that's the case, then they would need to stick with SMB as the file protocol (or download copies of files to local drives first). Either approach takes those other streaming solutions off the table.
Plex definitely needs it's own app. Although the plex server does support DLNA as well, that won't work over the internet. I haven't used Emby or Kodi.
As far as real-time transcoding goes, I don't think there is any ReadyNAS that can handle transcoding of 7 simultaneous HD streams, and none can handle transcoding of multiple 4K streams. If that is needed, you'd need to pair a high-end PC with GPU acceleration with the ReadyNAS.
Thanks 🙂 We don't need video editing. We only need to play some videos with a specific software.
ReadyCloud does provide remote access, and is free. But the performance might not be enough to do what you want.
If you go forward, you could try it, and see if it works for you. But my guess is that you will need to find another way to get secure access.
How fast is your internet upload/download, and what is the approximate bitrate of the files you are playing? If you aren't sure on the bitrate, you could give us the file size and the duration (seconds) for a typical file.
At the moment we still don't know where the drive will be connected to the internet, so I can't check the speed of the connection.
At the moment we still don't know where the drive will be connected to the internet, so I can't check the speed of the connection.
I was assuming it would be in your office. If it is, you can measure it using one of the laptops - though you'd want to connect the laptop to the router with ethernet.
You can work the problem backwards - take a look at the bitrate of the files. 7 simultaneous plays would require at least 7x of that bitrate in the upload link. But to be conservative, you should multiply by 10 instead.
So if you have ~5 megabit files, you should have 50 mbits in the uplink and downlink.
but FTP on OS6+ has issues with PASV mode, etc. behind f/w routers, etc. and no settings to control/fix them.
I don't know what you mean here, as both OS 4 and OS 6 allow you to set the passive mode port range. I've used both over the internet, and not run into any issues with passive ports.
There can be issues with masquerading when using FTP for both local and over-the-internet access. Those can be overcome by FileZilla, WinSCP, or other clients that have workarounds for that problem. I don't think the masquerading challenges are flaws with the ReadyNAS implementations, they are fundamental to the way the masquerading hack works.
It wasn't really addressed to you, so not sure why your answering my post? Anyhow, the fact is there are few options to configure FTP using the OS 6 Frontview - its pretty crap. Active Vs PASV option doesn't exist and PASV ports are determined by the server not the client etc. which also require firewall, routing etc. and can have potential masquarading issues... not interested in hijacking this thread about the inadequences of OS 6, just to make the OP aware of limitations with the option suggested with the limitations of configrationabilty of the interface.
@Retired_Member wrote:
Using \\<network>\ locations are good for LAN's (speed), and as mentioned above over the internet using VPN, however since VPN adds another layer and over the internet, there may be speed issues playing video without pauses.
There are also other solutions to accessing the NAS over the internet as a local drive, SFTP/FTPS is another (using s/w like mount SFTP Drive, etc.) - that way you can mount via SFTP/FTPS as long as the passwords are good enough. This may has have speed issues/pauses with playing video, but FTPS/SFTP may be better that VPN for transfering over the internet,
FTP/SFTP/FTPS is an unusual protocol for streaming. You'd need to download the full video for playback if you use that (or modify the software they are using to include native support for FTP streaming). I've only run into one program that uses FTPS as an actual streaming protocol, and honestly it didn't perform any better than using OpenVPN. In fact, it performed somewhat worse.
Again I'm not here to explain things to you, only to provide options to the OP and if the OP wants to persue the option, questions can be asked, etc,.
The videos don't need to be 'fully downloaded' before starting to play - that depends on cient-side player. I didn't mention anything about streamin protocols - these have other limitations, pro's and con's.
"Adding an extra layer" doesn't directly affect speed, though it does add a bit of overhead on the wire. Encrypting the VPN link does add some compute overhead, and if the router isn't up to it that could limit the transfer speed. But that isn't usually an issue today, as most routers have hardware acceleration for AES encryption (especially if they also do wifi).
Again depends on the s/w used and options available..
@Retired_Member wrote:
There are other methods to access (read only) video's that's also accessible over the internet, like running a media server (Emby, Plex, Kodi, etc.) - some of these (Emby/Plex) tend to transcode the quality depending on the speed of the connection and usually have their own interface (webpage based), so playing them through custom s/w may not be viable.
It'd be useful to know if switching to other software is an option or not. I've been assuming that @webmister wants to continue to use their current application software, and it sounds like that currently directly reads the files from the disks. If that's the case, then they would need to stick with SMB as the file protocol (or download copies of files to local drives first). Either approach takes those other streaming solutions off the table.
Plex definitely needs it's own app. Although the plex server does support DLNA as well, that won't work over the internet. I haven't used Emby or Kodi.
As far as real-time transcoding goes, I don't think there is any ReadyNAS that can handle transcoding of 7 simultaneous HD streams, and none can handle transcoding of multiple 4K streams. If that is needed, you'd need to pair a high-end PC with GPU acceleration with the ReadyNAS.
When you talk about streaming protocols, your introducing 3rd party s/w on the server side. Which means one would look at seperate hardware anyhow - I did not say nor suggest using the NAS to do streaming with 3rd party s/w, only to provide alternative options to the OP.
Either use the NAS as a storage unit and directly access it via LAN-Type access OR use it as a storage unit and use 3rd party media s/w to serve the media (stream, transocde, etc.).
Its up to the OP to determien their own setup and whatever matches their needs. The OP asked for suggestions and options without any info on their setup - so suggestsions and options where given.
