Remote Media Sharing and Collaboration – Featuring Hedge’s Postlab

This was really helpful in gaining more knowledge in regards to just the standard cloud workflow, appreciate the work that went into this meeting!

Had a question in regards to the portion about plugins and the like. If someone doesn’t have the same plugins, I’m assuming they’ll get either a media offline or watermark over it as soon as it is applied in another person’s workflow? I currently do finishing for color and audio, and the amount of plugins for my Fairlight tab alone is extensive, let alone the DCTLs and a handful of OFXs for color designs. What would the suggestion be for routing on this since Resolve 18 allows for the cloud workflow, but not everyone on the post team can either afford or needs those applications for their particular part of the pipeline?

This issue is a huge thing in the major workflows with Premiere also. One of the generally accepted (in practice, though not always public discussed) “rules” for large team working is the proper care and feeding of the plugins through the project.

Realistically, either they have to be ‘shared’ by all computers accessing the joint project, or … the users of them need to finish their work and create replacement media so that other users can do their work.

Like vfx people finishing their plates, then exporting out a full video clip to replace the comp or other placeholder/original media on the working sequences. Audio people with a ton of VSTs need to create replacement audio tracks for the sequences also.

And editors using plugins will also have to create replacement media. Perhaps naturally, editors seem somewhat more unaware of their need to do this than vfx/audio/color staffers.

So the use of plugins is something that 1) needs to  be discussed/negotiated from the start and 2) should only be done with the knowledge that it will likely require another generation of ‘original/working’ media in the project. So care with that work is of paramount importance.

In the Adobe booth a NAB or two ago, Karl soule was giving a 20-minute talk on the then most recent changes in meta-handling available for long-format workflows/Hollywood work. But a question came up pretty early on about plugins … and the rest of that presentation was simply Karl and several users talking about different issues and workarounds for plugins at various stages of the process. He clearly didn’t ‘finish’ his prepared presentation, but I thought the actual disussion more useful.

Just a quick comment about the Video Scopes tip for showing the circle overlays in the waveforms… That feature was introduced with Resolve 16. I’m amazed that I missed/forgot about it.

Although, since I run with external scopes, I guess I haven’t interacted much with the onboard scopes in the past many years. Now I have a reason to keep it open in the lower right corner for quick peeks.