Remote Collaborative video editing suggestions

[Festive_Cascade5D22]

I am working for a small university and our team is of three editors/shooters.  Due to work demand, there's an increased need for one person to help out on another person's project.

I've been trying to find out if there is a simple solution to the following workflow:

- we do most of our shoots in a studio.  If each one of us could store the media on a machine in the studio (and transcode it, if need be; mostly we shoot standard HD, sometimes 4K), what would be the most practical solution to access that media from home, as we are all working remotely?

The file size for a typical shoot day are between 16 and 128Gb.  

The most likely scenario we see in the future is that one person will shoot a project, and another will edit it.  Another possible scenario is that one will start editing a project, and another person will have to pick it up.

Adobe Teams has been hailed as the solution for collaborative editing.   But I am still not clear on what would be the best way to access the files that are stored locally in the studio.  Or should we upload those files from there to one of the cloud-based platforms?  BeBop seems like a good solution, but also pricey. Is there anything else out there?  

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

The Team Projects and Productions modes of Premiere Pro can both work for this sort of thing. Team Projects might be the more "clear" choice.

File storage is the issue of course. The TP project files are naturally stored on Adobe's CC Cloud so they are available to all those signed onto the project, that's not an issue. The media files are the big hassle.

There are a variety of things that can be used. From say uploading to a file-transport service like Dropbox or Wetransfer or all the others out there, for each user to download to their local machine. Depending on 'net speeds at each remote location, this may work ok.

BUT: you really shouldn't use their online/local folder setup for editing as it doesn't work that well. Users should download the files to a 'normal' drive on their machine outside of the transfer service, and use within PrPro from there. All users need to have the complete files of course.

A better option, and one that I and a partner in Cape Town SA use, is the LucidLink filespace service. Which is pretty close to magic. A couple Adobe staffers suggested we try this a number of months back, so we've got months of use of it.

Our shared storage is on Amazon S3 servers in London. Mo is in Cape Town, I'm in Oregon, USA. He tells me on phone that he's moving a folder of media to the 'virtual drive' LucidLink creates on each computer. Within seconds, the virtual LL drive on my computer is showing the folders. A few seconds later, media files start appearing in those folders.

As soon as they do, I can go to PrPro, and navigate to that virtual drive and import the files ... they haven't even finished uploading from Cape Town to London, yet I'm importing them into PrPro.

Now ... I can also simply start using them, drag/drop onto a sequence and get playback.

They've done an impressive job of parting up files to get the most needed stuff out first and then give the next bit and so on. We've been pretty stunned. And it's been totally stable for us.

So you might check to see if the LucidLink service would fit within your budget and needs.

Neil

[KLLVideo]

Creating a proxy workflow may be a good option. The key is to find out how large you need your proxies. What resolution is your original footage? How small can you make your proxies before editors can no longer work with them? The size may change depending on the edit. I have been able to get 300 GB of media down to a 2 - 4 GB offline project. If someone is at the studio they can then reconnect the original media and export the master. 

Since I am working with various cameras, codecs and resolutions I typically start with an examination of the footage. At that point I determine the proxy size for the footage taking into consideration how many audio channels are recognized by premiere (audio channels on proxies must match the original footage).  I always create my my own proxy presets since keeping the footage in the proper aspect is desirable (avoid the letterboxing). Once the proxies are created and attached, I string out all clips for each camera card into a sequence. I then offline the high resolution media and zip up the entire project folder (minus the high res). Upload your zipped folder to the cloud storage and editors have everything they need to start cutting. Perhaps something similar will work for your environment. 

If you have a standard set of cameras and frequently use a particular resolution this could streamlined by using Media Encoder watch folders. Also having a firm agreement between editors to keep a uniform folder structure and having unique filenames is recommended.