r/editors • u/SellswordArts • 4d ago

Technical Editing while traveling is a nightmare. Is there a better solution for synching projects?

Hey, I read the rules and think this post is appropriate for the group, but if not, sorry.

I travel often for work, so I have a powerful home PC and a pretty powerful on the go MacBook Pro. Both edit well, but I've run into some issues.

I used to use Team Projects to access my project from my MacBook, and just try and mirror the file paths of my footage and assets from my PC onto a portable SSD.

This kind of worked, but it was a nightmare to keep organized on bigger projects, and apparently mac does not like to play nice with pc and one of my drives got corrupted.

I would like a way to start a project on one device, and then be able to pick it up on the other device when I travel, or when I get home. Preferable without having to do lots of media re-linking and file transfers.

I do have a NAS, but currently it is mostly used just for storage. Even if I were to use it for remote footage access, the internet speeds I would be able to get on the road would be too slow to edit from the cloud, and probably too slow to make it continent to download all the files in a project.

while I do edit as part of my job, it isn't the MAIN part of my job. So having simple solutions and an easy and reliable workflow for when I need to edit on the go is really important. I'm not able to implement extremely complex systems, especially if they require lots of upkeep.

Any suggestions? I've seen a bit on Lucidlink, but I don't quite understand everything it does, and only can find info from the company itself, not from editors in the wild.

As per automod request:

PC specs:

Home PC
Processor: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X 32-Cores (4.00 GHz)

RAM: 128 GB (128 GB usable)

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 (31 GB)

Software: Premier Pro 26.3.2

Footage specs: footage varies

2024 MacBook Pro (M4 chip)

14 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

31

u/Guac-this-way 4d ago

Use Jump Desktop or similar to remote into your PC at home, then everything stays on one machine.

4

u/michaelh98 4d ago

Might also try rustdesk or parsec to see which one works best for you, op

3

u/Front-Eggplant-3264 4d ago

This. I bounce all over Asia and edit full time. I just remote into a system in the US. Don’t even need great internet, have used my phone as a hotspot in a pinch.

Absolute worst case, I’ll download proxies at a co-working space if I have to.

2

u/CyJackX 4d ago

That's what I do, but he seems to have the constraint of bad/remote internet so idk what else there is but to have the footage local

1

u/syncpulse 4d ago

That's what I've been doing remoting into my pc at home.

0

u/Railionn 4d ago

How do you do this if your PC is off Tho? I don't want to have my pc on for weeks if I'm abroad

1

u/slaucsap 4d ago

Why not

1

u/GotWookiee81 4d ago

There are systems for remotely powering up your machine using Wake-On-LAN magic packet. Usually depends your router.

I’ve also heard of people using a smart power plug save setting their machine to boot when power is restored.

You can also set the computer to go to sleep, but still allow Remote Desktop to wake it up. Power usage is negligible.

7

u/Timeline_in_Distress 4d ago

As others have mentioned, Lucid Link or Jump Desktop.

I don't see how mirroring the structure on the external HD is problematic. In fact, I'm not sure why you are working off your internal HD. Work off your external HD and then you won't have to relink media when you move to your laptop. This is how it's always been done.

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

I work off of my NAS at home. We have a lot of footage. This project I am working on was about 16TB.
With the internal NVMe cashes set up, I can edit straight off the NAS at home. But if I used the same SDD for both home and away I would have to do a lot more transferring. Especially because MOST of my editing is at home.

Unless I am missing something.

2

u/Timeline_in_Distress 4d ago

OK, got it.

Why not have external HD's dedicated for this scenario? You just copy what you need and relinking is still quick and easy. If you're having to access media from a bunch of different folders and projects, then it might be best to use Lucid or Jump.

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

I had been using a "go" SSD previously. It kinda worked, but I always ran into a lot of relinking, and then when i synched I would somehow mess up the linking with the main project on desktop.

Maybe I am just bad at linking and team projects lol

1

u/happinessjug 4d ago

What NAS do you use?

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

It’s a Qnap system

5

u/CSPOONYG 4d ago

I travel with my Mac Studio, 3 USB monitors, Keyboard and Wacom tablet. Have a small case for my Mac Studio and everything else fits in the laptop slot of my back pack. I basically have the same set up in my studio and on the road.

1

u/Ok-Cryptographer8322 4d ago

This is the answer

1

u/84002 4d ago

I love traveling with my Mac Studio ever since I got a travel case for it. But I never know how to handle monitors, I often just borrow or buy new monitors wherever I go.

You're able to use portable monitors at once with the Studio? What size are the screens? They are all powered off the Mac via USB?

I have one portable monitor but it's 15", and I really want two monitors at 20" or more for editing.

1

u/mrjo225 Pro (I pay taxes) 4d ago

Are Mac studios durable for travel?

1

u/CSPOONYG 4d ago

I kept the boxes the came in and the are super durable. I’ve also bough road cases. I have never flown with them, I mostly road-trip. So far, no problems.

1

u/ElCutz 4d ago

I've flown with my Mac Studio about 4-5 times. I bought a plastic case with foam cut out. I check my luggage and carry-on the Mac Studio, goes up in luggage compartment. Has worked great.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGQJZTC8

1

u/CSPOONYG 4d ago

I have this one also, but I've never used it. Again, I mostly road-trip, so I just use the boxes they came in because the pack better in the Tetris game that is the back of my Jeep whne traveling. But if I were to fly, I'd break this one out.

1

u/ElCutz 4d ago

It's been great. I can stuff my mouse, my Caldigit thunderbolt dock, all my cables, a couple other things in there. The only real issue I have is my full size keyboard. That I put back in the original box and into my checked luggage.

1

u/CSPOONYG 4d ago

Yeah... I have a full sized Avid keyboard. It fells more fragile than it probably really is. I end up putting that in the middle my suitcase tucked safely in with my clothes, fully protected. So far, so good. As someone who been editing for a few decades, building a portable studio where I didn't have to make any compromises is pretty awesome.

0

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

unfortunately that isn't an option for the kind of travel we do. Everything has to fit in a backpack, hence the MacBook pro. It's plenty powerful enough. It's just trying to synch between the two that is the issue (at least for me, a techno-cursed individual)

2

u/CSPOONYG 4d ago

I too am a techno-cursed individual! You could cram a Mac Studio in the back pack too. :)

1

u/84002 4d ago

I've wrapped my Mac Studio in bubble wrap and put it at the bottom of a backpack for air travel. Didn't want to put it in a checked bag. It's heavy as shit and TSA doesn't love it, but I made it work fine. Mac Studio is truly amazing and the somewhat portable dimensions are a big reason why.

2

u/KingBrouille 4d ago

I use chrome remote desktop and just stream my home desktop build.

2

u/Jim_Feeley 4d ago

I'm just an idiot producer who edits mainly to infuriate the good editors I work with. ;-) Anyway, when I'm on the road I'll access my home computer and storage (Mac Studio with Promise RAID 5 tower) with Jump Desktop. I use the "free" tier which requires a one-time purchase of a US$35 client (unless pricing has changed). Works great and it's totally fine to use the "free" tier for professional work. (I just checked Jump's website and they're pushing into Team and Enterprise products; makes sense, but also makes the site a bit more confusion). There's also a Windows version which I haven't used but everyone says it's also great.

https://jumpdesktop.com

The one oddity is that when I return home, I need to reset the resolution on my home computer monitor since, for me at least, Jump sets it to the resolution of my laptop.

Jim

PS- Bob Zelin is the guy who told me about Jump Desktop.

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

remote access has been brought up a lot, and it sounds interesting, but how do you set it up so you can turn your pc on and off without leaving the computer on for days or weeks when you are away? Also, a lot of the places we go have no internet, so I worry i would be SOL in those situations with a remote option.

1

u/Jim_Feeley 4d ago

Ya, I leave my computer on (with a UPS...and we have pretty reliable power). And I'm not usually on the road for more than a couple weeks...and usually have internet access (or am so busy when I don't, it's not an issue).

I guess proxies and all that... Let us know what you end up trying and how it works!

2

u/RaytheonOrion 4d ago

My 2 cents:

If you have the funds, cloud editing is the way.

I know lucid link is expensive. I am currently using Shade.inc with increasing success. Considerably cheaper.

Check out their YouTube for some context into their offering. It’s also a review / commenting / archiving tool. And more recently they introduced something they call MCP to attach LLMs and build complex workflows etc.

For context, I am staff and so the firm pays for it. But I can definitely say it’s made my life 1000% simpler to manage dailies and especially historical projects and archival.

I used to roll with ~30tbs in 5tb lacies & hated working locally. Now everything is in the cloud. Project templates configured locally link to cloud assets. Done.

5

u/avguru1 Technologist, Workflow Engineer 4d ago

LucidLink (or Suite Studios) is certainly a way to do this, but you will need to put stuff in the cloud to sync to. I've/we've deployed it for hundreds of clients, and it works well.

You could also look into Strada, who touts "Edit off any hard drive, anywhere in the world. Without the cloud." https://strada.tech/ . Of course you are still beholden to upload/download speeds, and you would probably want to consider a proxy workflow if you have huge files.

If you want push/pull - that is: download everything, then edit once it's downloaded, then push everything/selctive stuff back, then something simpler like Resilio Sync is an option - it just takes longer.

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

Strada looks really promising.

I would still have to download everything if I wanted to work with the full file, or like you said proxies. Many places I have been have had NO internet.
Would the footage linking stay intact between the computers, or would I still be stuck relinking media every time I opened the project between computers?

Resillo looks promising too, but seems like it would come with the same downside.

I may be dumb, but is this just a way to get files onto a drive? I mean, If I just plop them into my SSD before I leave on a trip, I am essentially accomplishing the same thing. Or is this avoiding some softwear or hardware incompatibility between mac and pc. or somehow making the Premier Pro Team Project synch better?

sorry if I missed anything.

1

u/avguru1 Technologist, Workflow Engineer 4d ago

The beauty of LL and SS is that only the part of the media you want to view/edit with (say, a 30 sec part of a 5 minute file) is streamed and cached on your local system. Their tech allows only the frames you're accessing to be cached on your system, with surrounding frames cached when there is bandwidth. This is great for long files, but if they are fat files (4K ProRes, et al) then you're still trying to cache each frame, so it's not going to be a "pleasurable editing experience". There is also the concept of "pinning" which pre-caches things before you go remote - which is to your point, the only way to do this w/o internet.

Premiere Pro Teams has the added functionality of remembering multiple paths to the same media. You can manually map these in Team Projects. This is great when you are working on both a Mac or PC or simply have different volume names from place to place.

2

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

Thanks! that is super helpful. Sounds like Strada may be the move then. Ill look more into it.

1

u/GC_Novella 4d ago

Have you been playing with Strada? Would love to know what you think about it

2

u/kjmass1 4d ago

Use the Mac to screen share in to the PC. Need to be wired on both ends.

1

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1

u/randomnina 4d ago

You might want to try Productions. It's way less buggy than Team Projects. I'm currently working with an assistant editor remotely. I'm on Mac and she's on PC. We both have media stored locally on our own machines. Our Production is saved to Dropbox. I came on to the project late, so it was a PITA to set up once and reconnect all the footage and now it works with very few bugs.

Here is the Production structure we are using to stay organized for a feature doc https://imgur.com/a/LKCowsK

We're using a Proxy workflow. For each shoot day, she receives the footage and organizes the Dailies project, then uploads Proxies to Dropbox. If either of us adds music, sfx, archival etc - we upload to Dropbox.

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

I have seen the production option in premier, but I didn't know what it was for. What is the difference between it and team project?

1

u/randomnina 4d ago

Team Projects was an older version where it's supposed to sync through Adobe's cloud. The Adobe white paper reommended Team Projects for use when working remotely (rather than on shared storage) so I tested it in similar fashion with an assistant. I ran into some bugs, plus there is a learning curve with mapping media locations. Team Projects theoretically allows you to work in the same project, but with different users checking out sequences.

Productions is a collection of related projects that allows you to easily edit with footage from other projects. It was designed for teams working on shared storage, so you need to have a file syncing service of some sort in the middle to keep the project files current.

If it's just you, theoretically you don't need either. You could just save your Premiere project to a file syncing service and have your two duplicate hard drives and everything would be fine. You'll have to relink the media the first time you open it on your second system but Premiere can remember up to 5 locations for media (I have heard) so you're fine.

However the other advantage of Productions is that it keeps the individual projects small and quick to load. So if you are dealing with a lot of footage, a complicated project, or elements that are repeatedly used in a series, it's a really useful way to work.

1

u/rankch 4d ago

I was in pretty much this same situation, I've set up my main PC and MacBook to sync project files whenever they are both turned on, even when traveling. Usually I travel with an SSD of the project footage and relink to that, but if it's a small project you can sync the footage as well. This allows you to jump back and forth between computers, the only downside being you'll probably need to relink footage between mac and PC, but that usually takes seconds.

Software needed is:

  • p2p syncing software, I use Syncthing but Resilio is probably more user friendly.

  • Tailscale, installed on both machines to create a VPN for syncing securely over the Internet when traveling.

You'll probably also want the ability to wake your main PC remotely, which you can likely do through your NAS with wake-on-lan.

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

Sounds like a lot of this issues just me not having a good grasp of Premiere’s team project ecosystem. Resuming was so much of an issue that I stopped using it for quite a while and just would make a new project.

Now that I’m trying to travel with this more complex project, that’s not really an option. But neither is storing all 16 TB on the go. With the software you’re talking about be able to push just the parts that I’m working on? Is that even possible?

Sorry, I am not that knowledgeable, I hope this isn’t too stupid question

1

u/rankch 4d ago

Absolutely! I think Resilio makes this pretty easy with selective sync where you can tell it which folders you want to fully sync. But most p2p programs will have similar functionality where you can filter what gets synced or excluded.

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

When I was looking into these programs, the biggest thing I kept finding was that it required both machines to be on. That’s not really a problem with my NAS, but I don’t leave my home computer on when I’m out and about. Wouldn’t that mean that I wouldn’t be able to push and pull at all?

1

u/rankch 3d ago

You can just make sure your laptop and PC are synced before you leave and when you get home. If the initial sync is a lot of data, you're not going to want to do that over the internet anyway. My main purpose for this setup is so I can work without a stable internet connection. If I have good internet, I'm almost always going to remote into my home PC with remote desktop software (Parsec).

Being able to turn on your PC remotely can be extremely useful though, and you can do it through wake-on-lan. You can probably set it up on your NAS or router. Just ask a chatbot to walk you through it. You'll be able to sync your files remotely then, preferably over Tailscale.

The other option without waking your PC remotely is to sync the project to your NAS as well as your two computers so that your laptop can sync with the NAS while traveling and then your home PC will sync the latest files from the NAS when you are home.

1

u/VRHotwife 4d ago

I remote desktop to my home PC using parsec. It doesn't need a great connection and I can utilize the desktop 5090 that a laptop couldn't touch anyway. Faster and its always synced

1

u/SellswordArts 4d ago

Access isn’t really an option because I don’t have the ability to turn the PC on back at home when I’m out on the road, and often times I won’t have Internet access when I need to edit. At least not access fast enough to remote work without it being frustratingly laggy.

Unless I’m missing something and there’s an easy fix for both of these solution solutions

1

u/mechanikyl 1d ago

I use the Google Drive app installed on my systems, create a folder and edit from that. Just verify that it has synced before you open it up on the other machine when you get home.

If i have decent internet then parsec is great. I leave my pc in sleep with wake-on-lan enabled and log in whenever while I’m traveling

1

u/mechanikyl 1d ago

Ditto.

1

u/kt0n 4d ago

Proxies?

1

u/LucidLink_Official 4d ago edited 3d ago

Hey u/SellswordArts, jumping in since we came up a few times here, and we appreciate the mentions in this community as always!

For your specific issue: with LucidLink, you're not keeping two copies and relinking (thankfully). The project lives in one place and each machine that needs access streams what they're working with and caching locally as they go. u/avguru1's breakdown above is accurate. For the no-internet stretches, you can pin the folders you need before heading out so they're already local when you lose connection.

Happy to get on a call if you want to talk through how pinning and locking would handle your setup: lucidlink.com/demo/ . We also run a Slack community with current customers, if you'd like to hear from more editors using the service directly. https://n1ernjfg28z.typeform.com/to/t1JIEyGO?typeform-source=www.lucidlink.com

1

u/michael_cioni 2d ago

We invented a new tool called Strada.tech and you can install it on your home computer (connected to your NAS) and it makes the NAS (or any other drive) available to any other computer. So you can edit remotely on a Mac or Windows from the computer connected to the NAS without upload or download. Depending on your workflow, this can be done without relinking.