Editing over Remote Desktop? Or alternate ways?

[Rob Tinworth]

I work almost exclusively remotely, using a combination of ichat and screensharing.

The real key for me is having two sets of identical media in my suite and the remote suite. Same codecs, same file structure, same drive name. That allows me to work on the cut, then use remote login and screen sharing to update my cut on the director’s suite at the end of every day, and have all the media relink automatically. Hit render on the remote machine and the director can come in the next morning and see everything in full HD.

If and when I need to work together with the director to review or tweak, I output a composite signal from my suite through a DV deck, firewired into a laptop and fed into ichat (FCP7 has a direct to ichat mode, but it cuts off the signal to your own monitor). And screen sharing allows me to see his script on his desktop wherever he is, and even annotate or edit the script.

You need a really good system of checking in and out scripts to make sure they stay in sync with your cut.

Render times can get impractical (I haven’t worked out a way of having the remote suite remember that it’s already rendered most of the sequence and only a few things have changed), so I also ftp quicktimes of the cut now and then.

This is primarily for long form work, where there’s time to capture everything, clone the drives and send them to me. For quick turnaround work where they’d have to ftp you the shots you’d need something like the proxies mentioned earlier.

Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv