Remote Editing Server

[wiliferd]

Hi people that are way smarter than me,

 

A couple of friends of mine are working on a documentary with a few other people and their current footage solution is the usual stacks of external drives and then driving over to each other's houses to get footage, edit, etc. 

 

I KNOW there is a better way to do this and I was thinking of helping them set up a footage server so they can both edit off of that and not worry about exchanging drives every few days. 

 

What's the best way to go about this? Would setting up a NAS from an old optiplex with a bunch of drives or something along those lines be good enough for them? Or is this something that I should just tell them to deal with?

 

I have a general idea of how this all works, but any input would be greatly appreciated!

 

They are also using macs (sorry everyone I know but they love their final cut).

[LIGISTX]

27 minutes ago, wiliferd said:

Hi people that are way smarter than me,

 

A couple of friends of mine are working on a documentary with a few other people and their current footage solution is the usual stacks of external drives and then driving over to each other's houses to get footage, edit, etc. 

 

I KNOW there is a better way to do this and I was thinking of helping them set up a footage server so they can both edit off of that and not worry about exchanging drives every few days. 

 

What's the best way to go about this? Would setting up a NAS from an old optiplex with a bunch of drives or something along those lines be good enough for them? Or is this something that I should just tell them to deal with?

 

I have a general idea of how this all works, but any input would be greatly appreciated!

 

They are also using macs (sorry everyone I know but they love their final cut).

So…. This likely will not be viable for them. They will be trying to edit video over the internet, that’s going to be an unusable experience. Editing off a local normal mechanic drive NAS is brutal enough, going out over the internet will make this not even feasible at all.

[Electronics Wizardy]

About how many gigabytes is a normal project for you?

 

If there in another house, the data would have to go over the wan, and unless both ends have 1gbe links(up and down) thats probably no go(and then probably not even then). For a edition nas to work, you need to be in the same lan(normally)

 

You can setup a nas this way, and have everyone copy the files over the net, then edit them, then copy them back to the server when done. Depending on file size and internet speed, this may be a similar amount of time.

 

Would it be possible to give everyone the raw footage from cameras at the beggining, then the only thing that needs to be moved around is the project file(you can also use the multiple editors on one project that premiere and resolve can do). But if your making footage when your editing this work work.

 

You can also have all the workstations in one house, and use something like parsec to remote into the editing pc. There is some delay, but its generally pretty good.

[wiliferd]

Thanks for the advice! I’ll talk with them and see what they think. 
 

That helps a ton!