I’m Done… With My Media Workflow Upgrades

A few months ago I launched a new series called the ‘Media Workflow Upgrade Series’ (snappy name I know), because the way that I was producing video content was a bit too cumbersome and laggy.

After making a BUNCH of upgrades, I have now ‘finished’ the upgrades (or I’m as close to being ‘finished’ as us techies can be!). So in this video I run through the various changes I made, and why I’m finding my new workflow so many quicker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8yyD_SQsWM

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone! A few months ago, I launched a new series called “The Media Content Workflow Upgrades Series.” Bit of a mouthful to be honest, but the whole idea of that series was that how I was producing YouTube videos was increasingly getting quite laggy for a range of reasons. For example, I was using wireless mice, which is not ideal because when you’re video editing, you need quite good precision, and there was just too much lag there. I was also using Adobe Premiere Pro, which is quite a laggy bit of software, so I’ve actually switched that. I also didn’t have enough disk space locally on my computer, so what I was doing was my old files with videos I’ve done in the past – they were stored on my old technology NAS, which has mechanical hard drives. Then if I wanted to reuse some of those video files, I had to take them from my NAS, drag them to my computer to then use in the latest video, and that was quite slow as well. Equally, I only had one monitor, so I was constantly Alt-tabbing between Premiere Pro and File Explorer and everything else, and that was quite laggy too.

So basically, I launched a series of videos where I was talking through exactly how I fixed each problem that I had, and I’m now a lot happier with my media content workflow. So what changes did I actually make?

Mouse, Mice..?

Well, the first one, as I’ve alluded to, was I actually went out and bought a proper mouse, because wireless mice are just rubbish. I loaded these in my cupboard, and then at some point, I just ended up using them. Now I’ve got a proper Razer mouse – it’s the Razer Essential. It’s quite a cheap one, but actually, the fact that it’s wired does help, and it’s got buttons on the side as well. Being able to go back and forward is quite useful because sometimes you’re in File Explorer, maybe you go into a particular folder to get a sound effect or something, and then you just click a back button and go back, and that is a lot easier. That might seem like a weird tip – I’ve always relied on cheap wireless mice, so I’m actually quite grateful I’ve actually changed.

Goodbye Adobe

Another upgrade I made is I used to be using Adobe Premiere Pro for my video editing software, but now I’ve switched that to DaVinci Resolve, which is a lot better. Firstly, it’s free, which is great, so you don’t have to pay like £200 to Adobe every year. But secondly, it’s just a much better bit of software – everything’s faster, it’s easier to do things, and it’s still really powerful.

Homelab NAS FTW

So they’re some of the smaller upgrades that I’ve made, but one of the bigger upgrades I actually made is I built my Homelab NAS, which is a Ryzen AM5-based system. I went with a motherboard that has space for three M.2 NVMe slots because the idea of this is that I’m actually going to be packing that out full of M.2 NVMe drives, and all my video content will live on there – and then I do my video editing over the network, so I’m sat on this computer but I’m actually using a wired ethernet connection from an ethernet cable that runs through my loft going into my Homelab NAS, and whenever I want to get some footage for a current video, I can just immediately stream it through my Homelab NAS with no lag at all.

While I could have done that with my Synology NAS, as I mentioned in the intro, because that’s got mechanical hard drives, that’s inherently slower. But also, the NAS only has a 1Gig ethernet connection, which is actually too slow in many cases for video editing – it just slows things down a bit too much.

10Gb Network Upgrade

So with my Homelab NAS, I made sure I put a 10 Gigabit card in there, and then I ended up buying a Ubiquiti 10 Gigabit switch as well. I made some mistakes along the way, which I spoke about in another video in the series, but overall I’m really happy with the Ubiquiti switch, and the UniFi web console is really nice too.

To be honest now, I’m in love with other Ubiquiti products. They’ve actually brought out a Mini Switch, which has 2.5 Gigabit ethernet, and that’s actually going to be quite a good product. It’s priced quite reasonably as well, so I can imagine myself putting that in loads of places in my house. At least then I’ve upgraded from gigabit connections throughout my house to 2.5 gig connections in my house, and then in my study, I’ve got the 10 gig connection. That’s because my workstation PC also now has a 10 Gigabit card, so basically when I’m doing video editing, this and my Homelab NAS are connected over a 10 Gigabit uplink, which is really nice.

mATX to ATX

But it wasn’t actually plain sailing getting there. I couldn’t actually fit my 10 Gigabit networking card in my old workstation computer because I had a small Micro ATX case and a Micro ATX motherboard with only two full-size x16 PCIe Express slots, but one of them was being covered completely by the graphics card. In the other slot, which is kind of a general problem with Micro ATX motherboards (and I talk about that in another video if you wanted to check that out), but essentially I realized because I don’t just want this for gaming, I also want to do video editing and have more expansion cards, I decided to upgrade this to an ATX motherboard.

So I went out and bought a really good Gigabyte Aorus Elite motherboard. It’s still on AM4 because I didn’t want to change my RAM or my CPU, because my CPU is a 12-core monster – the 5900X – and I’ve got 64 gigs of RAM in there, so I didn’t really want to change that. But I knew I wanted to actually get a new motherboard so I could get that expansion card in there – the 10 gig network card. So that was a fun upgrade too.

I went with a slightly better case as well – it’s got space for more fans, it’s got a little bit of RGB, and I’m not that into RGB, but the case does look pretty nice with it. And it only cost me like £30, which was a bargain because I didn’t want to really spend loads on actually upgrading from Micro ATX to ATX just to get a 10 Gigabit networking card. So in total, I think I spent just over £100 on the motherboard and the case, and then another £30 on the gigabit networking card, which is still fairly expensive just to get 10 gig networking, but I mean just over £150 isn’t too bad, I guess. And at least I’ve got that for future-proofing options, and it justifies the cost of buying my Ubiquiti switch too, because otherwise nothing would have been on 10 gig other than my homelab NAS. So at least I got two devices, and I can kind of justify that purchase.

Dual Monitor Setup

The next upgrade I made was with my monitor situation because I used to just have that one monitor, and as I mentioned, that meant I was constantly Alt-tabbing between all my different windows, which just doesn’t work. And that’s definitely the case when I do a YouTube video based on having a script or something like that because essentially, it’s nice to have the script in another window, and then when you’re editing, you can just see exactly where you are in the script. And if you make a mistake, you can just do a cut, move to the next bit in the script or the video editing software, and make sure that you know exactly where you’re at.

So having that second monitor is really nice, and I don’t always rely on scripts when I’m filming. Like right now, I’m actually relying on just some bullet point notes which are just over there – so the camera is there, and I just got my laptop there with literally 10 bullet pointed notes. But either way, it’s really nice to actually have another window just to put my script or my bullet points or File Explorer and all the other stuff there, and then I just have my video editing software open in the other one. I don’t lose that context switching from constantly having to close that window via Alt-tabbing.

Backup Space

The other thing I’ve done is I completely ran out of backup space because originally I had two half-terabyte drives on my workstation computer, and then with my NAS, I had another terabyte of backup space. And while that might sound like a lot, I have more than a terabyte’s worth of video content, and as a result, I was constantly having to juggle my active projects and my other projects between my NAS and my computer. I had to move files around, then my backup space kept running out of disk space as well, so I had to look at which files I might not need and then delete those just so I can stay under my one terabyte quota. And yes, I could have upgraded my cloud storage backup space to have more than a terabyte quota, but to be honest, it’s quite expensive.

So what I did instead is I went out and got a Hetzner backup space, paying for 5 terabytes of space, which is plenty for now, but certainly, I can upgrade that in the future if I needed more. And that wraps up the upgrades I’ve made so far, and while there are some future upgrades I might want to make, overall I’m really happy with things.

My Media Workflow Process

That’s because right now I’m filming with a camera that’s on record, and then I got my audio here – just a little lavalier mic that goes into a Tascam recorder. Basically, when I’m done, I sit on this computer, I use a little SD card reader that I’ve got plugged into my computer, and I transfer those files straight over to the Homelab NAS. I could actually plug the recorder into my Homelab NAS directly, but to be honest, because this has a 10 gig link, it’s easier just to put it in there, transfer the files over, and then I come into DaVinci Resolve and I do all my editing in there. And as I mentioned, that’s all over the network, but I’ve also got the two monitor situation, so things are a lot quicker now, and I don’t have some dodgy wireless mice which constantly causes lag and causes me to miss what I’m actually trying to click on and things like that, which was incredibly annoying.

Thank You 🙂

So overall, creating video content is a lot quicker now due to the upgrades I’ve made, and I’m really enjoying creating video content for all of you. I hope you’re enjoying some of my videos, and as always, I’m eager to receive feedback, so please leave comments as needed – either to tell me what good job I’m doing or where I’m doing a terrible job. So please do let me know, and thank you for watching this video!