Working on a computer, saving to the cloud

[David XG]

Sorry if this has been answered before. I've been reading posts and watching videos, and haven't found quite what I'm looking for.

I teach high school video production. I have about 100-150 students in 5 classes, and a computer lab of 25 Macs. Right now I have Adobe Suite site licenses for all of my computers, along with a couple other editing apps. Students can edit their films as long as they're in my classroom. I am considering switching to Premiere as my primary editor, and purchasing individual licenses every semester for all of my enrolled students. My dream is that students would be able to access and edit their projects outside of my classroom on their laptops, home computers, or library computers. My question is whether this is possible, and how complicated the logistics are:

1) Is it reasonable to edit video directly off the Cloud? I assume this going to be very glitchy. (Mostly my students are filming in 1080p, but occasionally someone films in 4K, which we usually create Proxy media for).

2) Can you (easily) copy the project media to any device, but autosave your Project on the Cloud?

   2a) Does Premiere do this automatically for you when you open a Project on a new computer?

   2b) Would students be able to seamlessly switch between two computers without needing to manually copy more files?

   2c) Any time the student imports new footage, would they need to manually import or copy it to the other computers I'm editing on?

   2d) Would it matter if the computers were Macs, PC's, or a mix of the two?

Students having the ability to edit outside of class would be a gamechanger for me. But if it's not a relatively simple process, I probably wouldn't make the switch. I am not interested in teaching a whole unit on file management, or inviting a lot of technical issues and frustration.

The answer I am hoping for is that a student could sit down at any computer (in my classroom, at home, etc.), and as long as Adobe was installed, they could simply log into their account, open their Project, and immediately continue editing from where they last left off.

Anyway, thank you for any answers or discussions/tutorials you could point me toward. Cheers!

[Warren Heaton · Accepted solution]

Organizing your work is a key and fundamental part of any Premiere Pro training.  There's no way to avoid that.  As far as that goes, make sure students create a folder for the current project, and at least the following three subfolders: "PR Project Files, "Source Footage", and "Exports".  With the Premiere Pro Scratch Disk options set to "Same as Project", they should be good to move from workstation to workstation as long as they themselves make sure to follow this method.

If each student has their own Creative Cloud Student plan, they can use any of the applications included in the All Apps plan.  I think the Student plan also includes the Substance apps as well (I forget off hand).  They just need to login to their Adobe ID at the start of class and remember to log out.  While there are cloud based file formats for Photoshop (PSDC) and Illustrator (AIC), these need to be saved as their local counterparts (like PSD) for video.  This will work for both macOS and Windows. Students would want to use USB3 or UDB-C mobile drives - preferably SSD based - that are formatted as ExFAT for cross-platform work.   If just on macOS, they can use HFS+ or APFS and if just Windows they can use NTFS.

The Creative Cloud storage included with a Creative Cloud subscription works like Dropbox or Google Drive.  While it's kind of okay for file transfer (assuming a very high-speed internet connection), it really isn't a location to work from directly.  You'd still want to get and put files there.  Again, I recommend students each have a mobile hard drive.  There are even very high bandwidth USB Flash drives available.

Students will be able to sync Premiere Pro settings via Creative Cloud as well as Adobe cloud services like fonts easily, but most of their Premiere Pro files will have to be done manually if trying to do it via the cloud.  As video files tend to be large, transfer time is mostly likely what will make this impractical.

The Cloud NAS | LucidLink provides a solution for storing source footage in the cloud.  The LucidLink drive appears like a local drive.  I haven't had a chance to try it personally. 

My remote setups are remote access to a remote video editing workstation via services like Jump Desktop (Jump Desktop | Remote Desktop | iPad iPhone Android Mac Windows | Collaborative Screen Sharing).  Maybe you could configure this for your 25 iMacs, allowing students to connect to them from home.  Of course, that would tie up the iMacs pretty quickly based on the total number of students you have.

Remote Editing in Premiere Pro for Pros! A Masterclass with Adobe (ipv.com) is a solution getting a lot of attention right now.  I may even be using it before the end of the year, but I haven't used it yet to comment on it.

It is taking on a lot if you officially open up your course to computers that students have at home as you informally become their remote ID person.  If you can wave a magic wand and provide each student with a system that meets Premiere Pro's system requirements, maybe it's not so bad. You'd probably want each student to have the same make and model computer to make it even slightly manageable.  That, or be sure to clearly let students know that they need to reach out to Adobe for support and that Chromebooks are not supported.

[chrisw44157881 · Accepted solution]

you'd want to integrate cloud storage with the FTP protocol and then map the FTP url to a network drive.

but your proxy files will have to be very low bitrate to avoid latency(think streaming quality). but since you're editing and not color correcting, it shouldn't be any real issue. but honestly, it might be easier to just give everyone an external drive. 4TB drives are super cheap now.

[R Neil Haugen]

I've been using the LucidLink process that Warren mentioned, with a partner in Cape Town, and myself in Oregon. Yes, it shows as a local regular drive on our computer, and for most things works well.

But it's a two-part thing: first you have to have storage somewhere 'out there', and second you use LucidLink to transfer data from storage to working in your computer. Our storage is on Amazon S3 servers in London. There of course is a cost for it.

So ... project files on the CC cloud, and the media on good sized detachable SSD drives is probably more doable for your students.

Neil

[David XG]

Thank you all for the responses. That gives me a lot to digest. I think my next step is some experimentation so that I understand this all.

Not all of my students will want or need to edit outside of class. Perhaps the best first step is to invest in a few external hard drives that students can check out if they want. And once I understand the workflow a little better, I can consider the advantages of fully remote editing.

Thank you! Cheers!