ASK NC

Dear NASCompares Team,

We are Running a Music Course Business, (about 700+ students). Due to this Covid-19 Pandemic situation,we are forced to only provide online course because offline course for more than 5 persons is still prohibited by government. we are thinking to shift our business ASAP from offline based to online based.

We have question:  If we have around 1500+ our self created learning videos (FHD & 4K videos 30-50gb files each), and we want our students to be able to stream our learning videos remotely anywhere (could be 100-300 students access it at the same time), at 720p/1080p which kind of NAS is suitable for our needs? Could you please help us choose the parts(CPU,Motherboard, Case, etc) if we need to build our own NAS/Server? Also which apps should we use best for our needs? Is PLEX sufficient? And is it possible to make video to be available for stream only (not download possible)

Looking forward to your reply. Thank you so much in advance, and have a good day!

It sounds like you're looking for a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device or server that can handle streaming high-definition video to a large number of users simultaneously. There are a few different options you can consider, depending on your budget and technical expertise.

If you want to build your own NAS/server, you'll need to choose the appropriate hardware components. For the CPU, you'll want to choose a processor with a high number of cores and good performance. Some options that might be suitable include the Intel Xeon E3-1230, the Intel Core i7-8700K, or the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X. For the motherboard, you'll want to choose one that is compatible with your chosen CPU and has the necessary connectivity options, such as Ethernet ports and USB ports. As for the case, you'll want to choose one that is large enough to accommodate your chosen components and has good airflow to help keep everything cool.

In terms of software, PLEX is a good choice for streaming media, as it is easy to set up and use, and supports a wide range of file formats. You can use PLEX to stream your videos to your students over the internet, and you can also set it up to prevent downloads of the videos if you wish.

To ensure that your NAS/server can handle the load of streaming video to multiple users simultaneously, you'll want to make sure it has enough memory and storage capacity. You may also want to consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to help distribute the load and improve the streaming performance for your users.

I would actually recommend converting any 4K videos into 720p and use TVS-873A with GPU card installed to stream these videos. Or do consider CDN cloud solution. This will store videos in the cloud in several continents for easy and fast download.