Qnap NAS / Mimiq for Media composer ultimate 2025.6 and beyond.

[Enquiries]

Hey!
All the threads i keep finding RE this are 3-6 years old so wanted to confirm.
trying to get Media Composer ultimate 2025.6 up and running with both media and project on the NAS. I have two systems connected (a apple silicon mac studio and a i9 PC) and i'd love to be able to access the project from both.
without getting too deep into the weeds atm - Do I still need mimiq in this day and age? or am I able to make this work without it.

- AllDrives and 3rd party bin locking is enabled on both systems.
- mac connected through NSF connection. PC is SMB atm and fails to make changes to bins / save. *haven't attempted NSF yet as wasn't an option.

Thnx!
Elad.

[ed]

You’re right — most of the info out there on Avid and NAS setups is a bit dated, but the fundamentals haven’t changed much.

To answer your core question: yes, Mimiq is still the simplest and most reliable way to enable true Avid-style bin locking and project sharing across multiple systems when you’re not on an Avid NEXIS. Even with AllDrives and 3rd-party bin locking enabled, Media Composer still expects that layer of bin-lock arbitration that Mimiq provides. Without it, you’ll often run into the exact problem you’ve described — one system being able to open projects, but the other failing to save changes or respect bin locks.

A few things to note for your setup:
• Protocol: For Avid, NFS is far more stable than SMB, especially when you’re mixing macOS and Windows clients. I’d definitely recommend switching the PC over to NFS.
• Mimiq license: Mimiq isn’t free, but it’s lightweight and specifically designed to mimic the NEXIS workflow. It effectively “translates” the NAS into something Media Composer is happy with.
• NAS choice: Your QNAP TS-h973AX on 10GbE is perfectly capable hardware-wise. Just make sure you’ve set up your storage pool as RAID 6 or RAID 10 for performance and protection, and enable jumbo frames on both the NAS and clients if you want smoother playback of high-bitrate media.
• Alternatives: If you don’t want to use Mimiq, it is technically possible to get by with careful manual project management and strict folder permissions, but it’s fragile and prone to bin conflicts. For collaborative editing, Mimiq really does save headaches.

So, short version: Mimiq is still needed in 2025 for proper multi-user Avid project sharing on 3rd-party NAS. Without it, you’ll continue to see sync and bin issues.