Relinking media takes a long time over NAS

[jean-philippea49263625]

Premiere Pro takes a very long time to relink all medias when opening a project over a NAS.  It's in background but you can't really work on the project when medias are pending.  On smaller projects it's managable, but on feature lenght documentaries, it can take from 30 minutes to an hour to be ready.

The NAS is a QNAP TS-h1886XU, all the network is on 10gb, the NAS is connected to it's switch over a 20gb fiber link.  I'm working on a Mac Studio M2 Max.  I did a LAN test and I reach 5gbits in reading so it's fast.  The network dosen't seems to be the problem.

I also tried to copy all the project on a good old 4TB Hd, which is WAY slower than the network, and the project open fine.

I really seems that something in premiere is not working correctly when the files are over a network volume.  Is there something I can do on my side to speed up things?

By the way the volume is mounted on the mac via SMB.

Thanks for your help!

JPA

[R Neil Haugen]

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, so I'm used to the discussions of RAID, network use, and all that.

Some Resolve users do not like the Qnap stuff as they say they have similar issues. Some say they've used them ok, but say you need to have them set correctly for video post work. I don't know those details. Over on the BM and LGG forums there's been discussions on the various NAS systems.

I've not had any of it so I have no personal experience. I do know that typically they want 10GBe systems that can sustain (not 'hit') darn close to the 10Gb mark before they consider them useful.

And ... one thing that might be a part of your issue ... is cache/preview storage being local or NAS based. The general recommendation for Premiere on a network is cache files need to be local, not network, for best performance. If your cache files are on that network, try changing to local.

[Christian Simpson]

I'm on a top of the line Synology via 10G as well and I have the same problem.  NAS is blazing fast with anything else except Adobe.  It's incredibly frustrating.  

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @jean-philippea49263625, and @Christian Simpson,

Thanks for filing the bug reports. Has this hardware and workflow worked as expected in past versions? Give the team more info. See: How do I write a bug report?

Please check this article for the best hardware practices for NAS or SAN systems. The media cache should not live on any remote storage but be connected to local storage only. Please check first if that is your issue. I hope the advice helps. Let us know!

Thanks,
Kevin

[Christopher22496946bgtf]

Same issue here. It used to work in previous versions. Something in 2024 is unbearably slow about re linking. We use a top of the line synology unit and have 10gbe. Our set up is always set to cache files locally and not on the network. Between this and the peak files issue it's the biggest thing holding us back.

[Jean-Philippe26722986ec0m]

Hi Kevin,

I'm glad this post gets a bit of traction.  Yes, cache is local and it dosen't change anything about relinking.  

[ianlf10]

Any updates here?

[Christopher22496946bgtf]

Please any updates? The aricle has no useful information in it as its about the PC / Mac hardware. Gives nothing on server networks. Can't speak for the other but this was never an issue before. It's changed in the recent updates. It's getting to the point where starting a project takes so long because everything is media pending for too long. 

[Hendrik N.]

Hi,

we had the same problem, this solved the issue, hope it helps:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-bugs/disabling-language-auto-detection-stops-relinking-p...

Best,

Hendrik

[jean-philippea49263625]

Hi, the transcription options are not related to my problem.  Both options are disabled on my system.  I can confirm that I have the problem in 2023 versions too.  Don't know forprevious ones.

[jean-philippea49263625]

This article solve nothing about this problem.  

[Ian Ü]

So glad to see we're not the only ones experiencing this problem.

We have been editing on our Thunderbolt NAS system for multiple years now and never experienced any problems. All disk drives are healthy and connection speed is blazing fast due to the 8 SSD's working in Raid 0, so no problem there. Nevertheless since a couple of months we seem to be running into this problem where if we open a fairly large project ALL files need to relink upon opening the project. This while the media has not been moved or the pathway hasn't been edited in some way.

Even when we open a project to let it relink and immediately close it when it's done, it starts linking again when opening just seconds later. As if Premiere Pro thinks all media has moved or cache has been deleted. This relinking time can take up to 30 minutes depending on the project size.

This wouldn't be a problem on smaller projects where the used media is manageable and relinking times are under 5 minutes (which is already a lot in my opinion). But on projects where there's alot of different codecs/framerates/resolutions (i.g. timeline used for broadcast) working together it just takes an abnormal amount of time to 'relink'. Does this conclude Premiere Pro is completely unreliable in a Professional workflow? Absolutely it does.

I have actually been on the phone with Adobe Support to troubleshoot this problem and their 'fix' was to work on local SSD's, which is absolutely unfeasable in a professional workflow.

We work with multiple editors on the same projects and sharing local drives not only complicates things unnecessarily, it introduces NEW problems such as offline media (while everything is located on the drive) with an extremely slow relinking time, rebuilding cache on opening a new machine, etc.. . Making opening and closing local projects unworkable. That they even suggested this as a fix is beyond me. Part of the suggestion was to work with 'less complex projects'... I hope this doesn't need any clarification to see that's a crappy solution to a crappy problem.

In all fairness, working locally did solve the abysmal long relinking time (from 30 minutes to roughly 3-5) but introduced too many other Premiere Pro bugs such as inconsistent playback, disappearing audio waveforms, sluggish MOGRT's, crashes on swithing tools, slow reaction time when scaling/positioning... do I need to go on before they realize I'm summizing every basic feature in an NLE?

In the end of the day this solves absolutely nothing and this problems gets added to the list.

... And YES I have cleared my cache.

[Stan Jones]

@Ian Ü,

This is not my area, but you present good information and it raises some questions for me.

Can you identify which release started the issue? What release are you running now?

Assuming you are working in 24.x, you can try (on one machine) rolling back to an earlier 24.x build. If you did not keep version 23 installed, you can still install it. One user says 23 does not help, but only a few months back is still some flavor of 24.

Are these Production projects? (I assume yes.)

Stan

[Christopher22496946bgtf]

Hi 

This definitley started for us in 24.3. It could have been before but im certain it was around this point. We are running 24.5 at the moment. The solution I found did bring our relinking time down from up to 40 mins down to 5 for large 2TB or more projects but it's still longer than it ever was. 

I'm not sure for others on this thread but we are not ever using Productions as we have found it far too buggy and unreliable especially with audio. We are using project files. 

C

[Ian Ü]

Problems started around januari/february. We do not update often so it must indeed be one of the first 24.x versions. Right now we're also on 24.5.0 and the problems are still there. Downgrading might not be a bad idea since appearantly its more important to mess up our label colors than to fix the bugs... 

We're not using Production projects for the same reason as @Christopher22496946bgtf. I edit in regular project files that need to be accessible to other editors on the server. While downgrading might help this particular problem, I'm not convinced this will solve the root of the problem: persistent bugs.

[Stan Jones]

Thanks to both of you for your responses. The downgrade in my mind is just for testing.

@Bruce Bullis 

Stan

[Daniel38884169fyxo]

If you don't mind my asking what solution did you find? Because I and my coworkers are consistently having this issue with any project that has remotely any "weight" to it. 

[Ian Ü]

Our solution was to try and avoid the NAS as much as we could by working locally and hoping this would be adressed in a (still to come) update. We also had been experiencing slow typing in the text tool, the solution there was to reset Premiere's preferences at startup (I know, a pain). So sadly no clear fix.

[ianlf10]

Has anyone had any update/progress wiht this?  It woudl seem 'avoiding the NAS' is just a silly way of doing things especially for those who share media.

[jean-philippea49263625]

The solution that we are starting to emplement is to ditch Premiere, save money and use Resolve instead.

[R Neil Haugen]

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, mostly based in Resolve, have for around a decade. I work in Resolve daily myself. And I've been through hours of discussions, and tons of tutorials and online discussions over NAS issues with Resolve. So it is not necessarily a panacea.

Both Premiere and Resolve can have issues with specific settings on different NAS setups. And they have different issues, so at times one set of settings does work better with one app than the other.

But you need the specific setups to work for both apps. And bluntly, most corporate computer techs do NOT know how to setup a NAS for video post production workflows.

Which is a problem for users of both Resolve and Premiere.