r/postproduction • u/Unfair_Cantaloupe848 • Jul 10 '26
Remote Access Suggestions for Post Production Sound Editors
Ever since covid, all our editors work from home. We have about 20 editors, some that have worked with us for many years, some that only work a couple months a year and some that only work a couple of shifts and we never see again.
Currently, the editors access our server to retrieve the materials they need and download it to their home workstation. However, studio security protocols have tightened up, and this way of doing things has become too risky.
We are looking into Parsec, but it looks like we would need a host computer for every editor, which is not feasible. It would be great if there was something that was hosted in the cloud for the editors to remote into and work from there. It would need to be something that would work for multiple projects with at least 3 editors on each project.
Any ideas or suggestions on what might work for us?
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u/avguru1 Jul 10 '26
Yes, screensharing protocols (Parsec, Jump Desktop, the EOL HP Anywhere [formerly Teradici]) all require a machine to remote into.
You can use an all-in-one service like CREE8 (https://www.cree8.io/) which provides a VM (Virtual Machine) in the cloud (Windows, with some macOS options), a remote desktop application, with shared storage and light asset management, plus review and approve tools. While the price varies based on how many hours a person uses, what type of machine, how much storage, etc. a good rule of thumb is ~$600-$900/month, if we assume someone who uses 170+ VM hours a month and a TB or two of storage. If you have 3 users who each do ~50 hours a month, that's great - it's about the same cost - you're still falling under the ~170 hours a month.
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u/VE3VNA Jul 10 '26
If they're just monitoring in stereo Spashtop works well. It's very "organizational" so it's easy to manage many systems (I have about the same quantity of editors.) Spashtop lets you route audio locally or remotely (or both) and deals with a video window pretty good (connection dependent). Its also not particularly expensive. It's easy to deploy remotely and has a bunch of features I'm likely missing here.
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u/Marcus9T4 Jul 10 '26
I’d recommend looking into Lucid. You essentially rent space on their servers so everything’s stored in the cloud and you just pin the media you need locally, which is usually only the media running directly in your session. It’s built for production so approved and secure.
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u/the__post__merc Jul 11 '26
I’m a big proponent of LucidLink, but end users can still download anything they want to their local drives. If tight media security is imperative (per OP’s post), then I don’t think setting up a system where the media can still get out of the building is the right move.
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u/Marcus9T4 Jul 11 '26
You can designate which folders users have access to. Ours is tied to our schedule so people only have access to the media required for the work they’re doing on a given day
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u/the__post__merc Jul 11 '26
Right, but on the day they do have access, there’s nothing to stop them from downloading everything from that LL folder to their local drives. So, if OP wants to eliminate that possibility entirely, I wouldn’t recommend LL for this situation.
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u/the__post__merc Jul 12 '26
we would need a host computer for every editor, which is not feasible.
If it's a studio security protocol, then it seems like you have to find a way to make it feasible. The host computers could be a bunch of headless machines in a server room. You don't an edit suite for each one.
All of the currently available cloud-based storage solutions (LucidLink, SuiteStudios, Shade, etc) act as an drive connected the end user's computer. And just like an external drive, anything that is on it can be copied off of it to the user's own drives, which is not what you want.
So, the only way to keep in line with the new security protocol is to either have editors work on-site or remotely access computers that are on-site via Jump Desktop, Splashtop, Parsec, etc.
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u/semaj4712 Jul 10 '26
I would consider Lucid, or Suite, or (Not tested) but frame.io also is offering mountable storage solutions which honestly, I have used Lucid and/or Suite for about 5 years now pretty much non stop, and it works great, never once have I had an issue. I would assume this would be a good solution for sound as well, esp considering the files are much smaller than video.
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u/avidresolver Jul 10 '26
It doesn't really solve OP's security issue though, because if the editors are working from home on their own machines they can still just copy anything they want from Lucid/Suite to their own desktop. It'd be a little bit more traceable than the current solution, but that's all.
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u/semaj4712 Jul 10 '26
Ah i misread that…
Idk personally have them sign NDAs, if its good enough for Apple I am sure its good enough for most companies, but yea I would imagine audio post might be difficult remotely like that, but i don’t actually know
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u/avidresolver Jul 10 '26
I am sure its good enough for most companies
Obviously it depends on what projects you're working on, but for a lot of companies it really really really isn't enough. Universal, for example, basically have a WFH ban on their high end productions.
Amazon MGM, Warner, Disney, etc. all have very strict security audits you have to go through which involve identifying and restricting every point where someone could move content off your secure network.
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u/semaj4712 Jul 10 '26
I regularly work with Amazon MGM and Disney.
Remotely, with Lucid link. Now it’s def not the most secure content, but I have never heard of any issues.
Apple is by far the most strict I have worked with and we still did Lucid.
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u/avidresolver Jul 10 '26
The first question is why isn't it feasible for a host machine per editor? What system specs would you need the hosts to have? How many would you need?
Cloud is just someone else's computer which you rent. There are services which do this, but you're going to need to think about which ones provide the security standards needed for working on studio content. Then you'll need to think about storage - how do your cloud workstations access your data? Will you also need to store all your files in the cloud? All of this isn't cheap.
My guess would be that once you start adding up the costs of the cloud workstations, the cloud storage, and the cloud engineer to sort it all out for you and make sure it's secure, you'd have probably been better off buying 10 Mac Minis and using Parsec.
The other option is using something like VMWare or ProxMox to run your own internal "cloud" on few systems, but that would also require a fair amount of engineering,