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Resolve Remote Workflow: Hawaii To LA & Back

March 6, 2020

In this From The Mailbag we revisit some key aspects of a Resolve remote workflow as we try to answer questions from a member on the same subject.


Series

From The MailBag Episode 81

Long Distance: Working Remotely With Resolve

I depend on remote workflows for making my business work.

Some days I’m at home, some I’m at the facility, some I’m playing golf, and others I’m somewhere in between. Availability of media, projects and of course the gear to work on projects is very important to me. A while back, I wrote an article about using Resilio Sync, VPN and other tools to facilitate the kind of remote workflow that I need.

Four years later, most of that article and workflow still holds true – I use Resilio Sync daily, and VPN from time to time – although not using OS X server anymore to make that happen – and of course I still used a shared PostGresSQL database at the studio and at home.

Recently, Mixing Light member Ernest wrote in with a plethora of questions about a remote workflow between Hawaii and his studio back in LA. While we can only dream about grading from Waikiki, we thought Earnest’s questions were a good reason to revisit this subject. Resolve remote workflow is what this installment of From The Mailbag is all about.

Update: MailBags & Podcasts on MixingLight.com

Before we dive into the Mailbag, a couple quick announcements.

For the past few years, we’ve been back and forth on different ways to handle podcasts on Mixing Light. One of the most requested features (and for good reason) has been the ability to play our member only From The Mailbag series from various podcast apps on phones, tablets and other devices.  We’ve experimented with different ways of doing this while still keeping these podcasts for members only. We finally have a great solution!

If you’re a Mixing Light premium member, you now have the ability to listen to From The Mailbag with applications that support private podcasts such as:

iOS

Android

  • Pocket Casts
  • Podcast Republic
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Our private podcast feed is available to Premium members. As a premium member, when you login to MixingLight.com you’ll notice a podcast link on the Member Dashboard. You can use this link to add the MailBag private podcast stream to one of the apps above or any application that supports private podcasts. If you’re a streaming member, you don’t have this ability, but you can still enjoy our podcasts by playing them here on the site.

The second podcast announcement is that we also have a public podcast stream!  From time to time we interview industry folks and those podcasts are always free. Those podcasts are now available on popular podcast sources like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora and more. Just search for MixingLight.

If you have any questions about these changes please let us know by using the contact form.

Hawaii > L.A. > Hawaii

For a long time when people talked about remote workflows using Resolve, they were probably referring to the remote grading option from within the software. Remote grading allows two Resolve systems (using the same version of the software, with duplicate media on both ends) to connect with one system controlling the other – it’s kind of like ‘ghost riding‘.

However, for most of us, that kind of remote workflow is not really what we’re after.  Here’s what I mean by remote workflow:

  • Media (potentially render cache/optimized media) synced between two or more locations
  • Database and or .drps synced between locations
  • Easy database access – thru VPN or Remote Desktop solutions

When Mixing Light member Earnest wrote in, he had a lot questions surrounding these three main aspects of a Resolve remote workflow.

Some specifics from his email include:

  • Setting up a VPN server – can a database server also be a VPN server (please refer to my original article for some caveats on this)?
  • Is Resilio sync still a good option for syncing media?  If so what version?
  • How about syncing LUTs, and plugins between locations?
  • What’s the purpose of mapped mounts in Resolve?

Obviously Earnest’s questions also got us taking tangents on a few areas but all related to Resolve remote workflow. The bottom line is there are many ways to setup a Resolve remote workflow but with a little planning, due diligence and some technical know how you can make it work pretty seamlessly. I’ve been happy with my remote workflow for four or five years between my home studio and my office, which has allowed me a lot more flexibility in how I work.

Now if I could just figure out how to do some grading from the beach in Hawaii…

Have A Question For Team Mixing Light?

Remember, if you have questions that you’d like to get an opinion on please use the contact form

Your questions can be aesthetic, technical or even client related. We’d love to hear from you, and your question might make future episodes of From The MailBag.

Enjoy the MailBag!

-Robbie


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