Networked performance issues?

Well we've decided to go 'all-in' cutting and finishing a show in Resolve, and we're having some major problems and now I'm questioning that wisdom. We're running three machines, trying to access the same project for shared work. Lately, I've been having really awful performance issues. Sometimes playback will work, but most of the time it'll be choppy/laggy at just a couple frames a second. None of the hardware has changed, and I've been editing this type of footage on these systems for some time. So I'm not sure why I'm getting these problems. Any suggestions of where to look to start troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated.

Storage: Synology NAS connected via 10GbE (see attached speed test)
Footage: Sony Fs7 UHD (not a terribly high data rate)
Machine A: running Project Server
-- Project Server 17.1
-- Win 10 Pro
-- Resolve Studio 17.2.1 Build 12 (which ironically advertised improved performance over networks)
-- CPU AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X
-- 64 GB RAM
-- GPU GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, 8 GB VRAM, Studio Driver v 462.59

2nd and 3rd machines are also Win 10 Pro machines, slightly worse spec, but have edited Fs7 footage off this same NAS over this same network with no problem whatsoever. They're running the same version of Resolve Studio.

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

I'm bumping this one more time with a bit more info to see if someone else has any experience.

So the problem (that I still cannot solve) seems to be that Resolve intermittently is causing the SMB service on the Synology NAS DS1817+ to spike. I have a project with a few timelines; I'll click to open one timeline and not even play it, and the SMB service on the Synology suddenly spikes CPU usage. If I do try to play, it's laggy; disk speed test will measure awful values, like 64 MB/s read. If I click on another timeline, or close Resolve, usually the SMB service will settle back down very quickly. I haven't noticed any other software causing the Synology to freak like this, so although it seems like it might be a Synology problem, it's a "doesn't play nice with Resolve" problem.

BUT... it's random/intermittent. One day it'll be one timeline that won't play. Another day it'll be another. Another day nothing will work or everything will work. It's really crippling and I'm at my wits' end. Anyone here successfully using a Synology NAS? With a shared project? Via GbE?

When it's working it's smooth and playback/scrubbing is great, I get 800 MB/s read, which is more than enough for everything I do. But that "when" is killing me. Thanks in advance for any insight.

I access my media via SMB over 10GBe, though not with a Synology NAS. It's always been fine, except the one time (back in v16) when I tried to put Optimized Media on the network. Optimized Media generates one file per frame, resulting in tens or hundreds of thousands of individual files being written or read. Trying to write those files gave me an ETA measured in days, presumably as a combination of slow response on the destination filesystem (which in my case is multiple RAID sets across 2TB HDDs) and poor performance of the SMB layer.

So my questions would be:
- Do you use Optimized Media, and if so is it located on the network filesystem? If yes, I'd strongly consider not using Optimized Media and making Proxies instead. Proxies generate one file per source media file, and should perform fine over the network.

- Is your "Cache files location" (in Project Settings) set to the network filesystem? Because Render Cache also generates one file per frame. I would recommend that Render Cache goes to a fast local SSD/NVMe drive, and not over the network.

- If yes to the second question, what are your Render Cache settings (in Project Settings)? Do you have Background Caching enabled? Background generation of one-file-per-frame cache to the network could perhaps explain the intermittent problems you're seeing.

If none of this applies - you're not using Optimized Media, and your Render Cache location is local not networked - then I don't know. I'd contact BMD support directly.

SMB might not be robust enough to handle the data request from DR. Try iSCSI.

So my questions would be:
- Do you use Optimized Media, and if so is it located on the network filesystem? If yes, I'd strongly consider not using Optimized Media and making Proxies instead. Proxies generate one file per source media file, and should perform fine over the network.

Good thoughts! Yes I do use optimized media. I never quite understood the difference in Resolve between 'optimized' and 'proxy'. But that sure sounds like a relevant difference!

And yes auto-cache is probably on. So let me look at those things.... and FINGERS CROSSED.

This has been a really tricky one. I definitely owe you a beer if this gets it sorted!

SMB might not be robust enough to handle the data request from DR. Try iSCSI.

iSCSI is no good for a setup where you want multiple workstations to be able to access the same files at the same time, which the OP needs.

I suppose if local space was very short it would be possible for each workstation to iSCSI mount a volume from the NAS for Render Cache use (one volume per workstation). And yes that may well perform better than SMB, especially when large numbers of files were involved (Optimized Media, Render Cache).

But it'd still not perform as well as a local SSD or NVMe drive, which I'd greatly prefer for Render Cache. I'd only consider iSCSI if for some reason there was no way to add a suitably sized local SSD or NVMe to each workstation for caching purposes, eg if laptops were involved.

Good thoughts! Yes I do use optimized media. I never quite understood the difference in Resolve between 'optimized' and 'proxy'. But that sure sounds like a relevant difference!

Yeah I'm not sure the manual describes the actual technical difference. Until v17, Optimized Media was the only option. Then v17 added proxies, and they're generally superior in ever way. The only exception to that is that one can generate Optimized Media for an arbitrary section of a timeline, which is not possible for proxies. But then you have Render Cache, plus the new Render In Place feature, which can generally handle those cases.

There's no longer even any way to tell what clips/media have Optimized Media, as that ability somehow got removed at the time proxies got added. So you could generate Optimized Media and then not even be able to see that it existed after that. So it's a pretty bad workflow, even worse than it was in v16.

You can quickly tell if Optimized Media is slowing things down for you in your current setup by unticking it in the Playback menu. Then Resolve won't even try and access it.

Then when convenient I'd delete all your Optimized Media and generate proxies with the desired codec. And make sure your Cache files location is a local disk so any future Render Cache generates locally.

By the way, if you had thoughts of Render Cache being shared between machines (hence thinking it'd be good to write cache to the network): forget that. Render Cache is segmented by workstation. Without messing about on the filesystem, it's not possible for two LAN machines to share their render cache. More details on that here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=117570

So that's even more reason not to put Render Cache on the network - it's not going to be shared so there's no computational benefit, so all it's likely to do is slow things down by virtue of a network connection having lower bandwidth and higher latency.

Tob Jobbins you are a GENIUS!

I hope I haven't counted my chickens too soon, as the problem was intermittent. But this seems to have fixed it. I've deleted all the optimized media, and just turned off "use optimized" and "use proxies" was off anyway. I deleted the cache, then switched the cache over to my internal SSD. You were correct, I had put that on a network drive in hopes of it sharing. And I turned off auto-cache after 5 seconds and smart cache. So I can manually set a clip to cache as-needed and it'll just read those sequential frames off the internal SSD.

I will have to mess with proxies, as there are some formats I work with that just won't give me reasonable realtime playback (e.g. Canon R5 8K raw). But it sounds like that will be manageable.

Thank you SO MUCH! Are you in LA? I'll buy you lunch once Covid has settled, and we can talk shop.