best practices for collage/mashup job

Dear all,
I am going to be working on a mashup, a compilation of quick extracts (average 5 seconds) of long format videos (2 hours). Just like Adam Curtis or Hank Corwin would (sorry for the pompous references but they do inspire me on a daily basis).

Re: Resolve performance and crash possibilities, should I import the multiple long videos and then find my edit points (I find Resolve incredibly slow in this regard) or prepare my 5 second videos outside of Resolve and them import them to do my collage? This implies browsing and cutting/splitting with a small tool first. this is not a 100% Resolve option, which is regrettable.

Anybody has prior experience on these work-intensive jobs?

Thanks

should I import the multiple long videos and then find my edit points

Yes.

If Resolve is slow here, you may need better hardware. What are you currently using?

I am working with a 2019 windows workstation with intel i9 and 64 gigs of RAM. All my source footage videos are on a NAS connected via Ethernet. And all is 1080p sometimes even less!

Happy to invest, it this solves my issue, because I am moving too slowly right now.

Thanks

Which specific part is slow?

What GPU do you have? What's the codec of the footage?

RTX2080ti, was a very good card 5 years ago.
mostly h264 footage in mp4 or mkv.

Which specific part is slow?

Your hardware should perform well enough. I would recommend working exclusively from internal storage for Local Libraries.

Resolve is super slow in ingesting the video in media page. And the timeline payback in edit page is sluggish as well. I don't do proxies, maybe I should systematically.

Yes internal storage would be faster, but unlike NAS it is not RAID. Or I need a workflow that copies all my source material from NAS to internal.

Ho do you guys work to get speed + large volume of data?

Or I need a workflow that copies all my source material from NAS to internal.

Yes, do that !

I edit off a fast local SSD and copy the files from the archive while I work on the project.

And use proxies. If you want them to be "super smooth scrubbing" then use a NON long-gop lightweight format like DNX, Prores proxy or Grass Valley ... plenty of good options Resolve can make automatically.

For me Resolve performs far better than any other NLE I have used and there is absolutely no reason you would "prepare" footage in another program beforehand.... that is it's primary job.

If you have it set up right, you should be able to zip up & down your timeline like lightning. The real issues will come if you start using complex fusion effects, etc. ... that WILL slow things down, and is harder to manage. Caching helps. Better hardware too.

Resolve is super slow in ingesting the video in media page. And the timeline payback in edit page is sluggish as well. I don't do proxies, maybe I should systematically.

Yes internal storage would be faster, but unlike NAS it is not RAID. Or I need a workflow that copies all my source material from NAS to internal.

Ho do you guys work to get speed + large volume of data?

Is Davinci slow before or after waveform generation? If before: The (presumably) HDD in the NAS doesn't have enough IO to read the audio AND read video to Davinci. A HDD can do 150 IO per second, an SSD can do minimum 8 000. Assuming you have less than 50 drives in the NAS, an SSD will be faster.
If after: The only thing I can think of is bandwidth limitation, but 1Gb/s network is so cheap I refuse to believe it's that.

I haven't seen a tiered NAS in a while, where reads go to SSDs and writes go to the HDDs, which probably is what you want.

I like the Kingston DC600M in 960GB or 1920GB for their endurance (5 years with 1 DWPD, absolutely insane!) where I host all my current project video files. I have another drive with Cineform (or ProRes or HNxHR or your choice of intermediate) where I store all the "I need this for later" generated files, I'm debating if that needs to be an SSD, but the IO required for waveform (and my lack of patience) forces me to do it on an SSD.

Many thanks for your reply.
In my case Resolve is terribly slowed down as soon as I point the media page to the location of my pool of content which has dozens of 5GB files listed. And the issue cannot be caching as I have lots of space for that.

My motherboard msi z390 indicates 6 sata 3 slots available, so the best would be to use these slots and add a couple of Kingston DC600m internally and use them for current projects? SSD for sure, but I am trying to understand which physical connection is best between USB3 external and internal.

Separately, I wonder whether what I consider big RAM of 64gb is being of any use for Resolve.

Thank you!

Many thanks for your reply.
In my case Resolve is terribly slowed down as soon as I point the media page to the location of my pool of content which has dozens of 5GB files listed. And the issue cannot be caching as I have lots of space for that.

My motherboard msi z390 indicates 6 sata 3 slots available, so the best would be to use these slots and add a couple of Kingston DC600m internally and use them for current projects? SSD for sure, but I am trying to understand which physical connection is best between USB3 external and internal.

Separately, I wonder whether what I consider big RAM of 64gb is being of any use for Resolve.

Thank you!

1) So it is during waveform generation.

2) Yes.
Here's your homework for today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0
As I've written above, it's less about the bandwith and more about the IOPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS

3) I have 64 GB of ram (Note the capital GB. In metric prefixes g doesn't exist, b is bit and B is Byte, meaning that 64Gb is 8GB). I like not having to worry about hitting 32GB (which I've done multiple times), but I deal in very long timelines (50+ hours). To find out if it's a problem, start Task Manager or System Informer, see the Commited memory: If it hovers around 100%, you need more RAM.