What’s Inside Our RV Technology Cabinet? Geek Tech!

Thanks, Rob! Glad you like 'em! We do, indeed, have a ton of video footage to store (hence the mondo capacity of our QNAP NAS drive!). We use Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) as our editing software... but started out using iMovie since it was easy-to-use and came free on our MacBook! Honestly, iMovie did about 95% of what we wanted to do for many years. It's only been the last few that we have needed the greater power & flexibility of Final Cut. Luckily... Apple had changed iMovie's interface to be much more like FCPX, so the transition was fairly straightforward.

As far as organizing... we don't use any particular software. We store all of our footage in folders named for what the project was (and we have some "catch-all" folders for non-project-related footage like driving scenes, etc). We keep multiple copies of new footage that's waiting to be edited into a video (2 separate external drives plus a backup copy on the QNAP) so it's easily accessible (and portable). But as far as finding it goes... we rely on Peter's (almost-creepy) memory for anything he's shot. Seriously... he's like the Encyclopedia Photographica. If he shot it... he remembers it. And since it's organized by subject name and/or date, we can find it easily even when he can't immediately pull it up from memory. Both of us thinking the same way about most things, and being pretty anal-retentive, doesn't hurt either! LOL!

Hey Randy! Thanks! It's always nice to hear! The APC unit we're using is available at Amazon here. There are larger units (with more battery power to either power more devices OR keep them powered for longer), but since all we really needed was to ensure our QNAP NAS drive had time to gracefully power down (it's connected via the USB cable to the UPC so it gets alerted when power goes off and initiates a shut-down procedure), this one was sufficient. Hope that helps!

Thanks so much for the kind words, Christopher! It's always nice to hear that people find our videos helpful!

We've talked about doing another video about the QNAP itself, but figured it would be such a bore (and not of interest to a large segment of our viewers) that we've backburnered it. May have to add it back to the list of future videos if more people care.

In a nutshell... we pretty much use our QNAP for everything you mentioned: movie storage (both home movies & ripped copies of DVDs we own), photo storage (backups of all our photos taken or digitized), video storage (for footage and Final Cut Pro X projects from our YouTube videos) and backup (both Time Machine for our Mac laptops and an extra backup of our website client files). We chose the one we have because of it's capacity (6 bays with 4TB means 24TB of total storage) and because, when we bought it, it was one of the few devices that was capable of working with Time Machine (that's likely changed now).

Some more nitty-gritty - we have the 6 drives broken up into two groups:

One pair of drives is configured as a RAID1 array and serves as a 4TB Time Machine drive for both of our laptops. Since most of our important files sync between our laptops, and we run regular bootable clones of each laptop to a portable drive, this is just an extra precaution. Plus, the ability to roll back a change to a file through Time Machine can be invaluable at times. ;) The remaining 4 drives are set up as a RAID5 array, which we then partitioned into several separate "drives" for storing various file types - one partition for each of the following: client file backups, YouTube Video backups, photos, and videos (home & ripped movies).

QNAP has a fairly well-stocked app library to choose from, which we used to install the Plex Server onto the system. Plex allows us to browse our library of videos from any device connected to our network on the RV. We use a 4th Generation Apple TV to allow us to watch the Plex content on the big TV up front.

For the most part, we don't even think about the QNAP (other than shutting it down before we move the RV to avoid having the drives spinning while we're on the road) - it just does what it does, making all of our files available to us on any device we want.

Hope this helps... and that it didn't put you to sleep! LOL!

Hi Kerry,

Thanks so much for your kind words and for spreading the word! We really appreciate it!

The fan we use in our Tech Cabinet is a Noctua 12V computer fan that we bought on Amazon... you can get it here: http://amzn.to/2jPP072 We jury-rigged a connection to an existing 110V-to-12V power adapter that we had lying around, so that we could plug it in to the power strip in the compartment. We could've wired it right into the 12V power from the RV, but figured the only time we need the fan running is when all of that equipment is powered up... which all requires 110V, anyway.

Hope this helps!

LOL! Thanks ladies! The English translation? Stick with your VCR! ?