Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1359892
41 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E T E C H will allow, confirm that it sounds good for everyone, and then go." Teradici for Remote Editing E m my- w i n n i n g te l e v i s i o n e d i to r George Brown III who specializes in the fast-paced world of day-of-air editing, chose Teradici (www.teradici.com) as his essential tool over the past year. During the pandemic, Brown has been cutting shows for "Access Hollywood." Instead of editing on the Avids at Universal Studios in Hollywood, Brown edits from his home using an NBCUniversal-issued laptop equipped with Teradici — a virtual workspace architecture that compresses, encrypts, and transmits pixels from a remote source to a local endpoint. As Brown put it, "Using Teradici is so simple. You launch the software, log in, pick the room you want to drive, and it connects you to a machine that is located in Uni- versal Studios. It's like I'm right there. Teradici is what NBCUniversal uses as their exclusive way to patch in." According to Brown, NBCUniversal has been a leader in remote editing workflows due to their experience of covering the Olympics. "For the past ten years, they had an entire edit farm in Stamford, Connecticut, that was ready to do any Olympics coverage that they had, remotely. There may have been a few editors on location at the Olympic event sites, but most of that editing is being done remotely via the cloud," Brown said. "They were ready to deal with the COVID crisis because of the lessons they learned through how to do the Olym- pics remotely." Teradici was one of the quickest ways to implement remote editing. Brown explained, "There's no data that's being transferred. That's the beauty of it. Our footage lands and is drawn from local servers on the studio lot that we access via the internet and the Teradachi software is our go-between. It creates a virtual connection. So you're not trans- ferring files." S i n ce i t 's a re m o te v i r t u a l wo r k- station that securely accesses stored footage (whether it's on a local server at Universal Studios or cloud storage), Teradici can be optimized for a variety of bandwidth situations using algorithms to dynamically tune the remote display up or down, based on the quality of the connection. Ideally, there's no difference between editing on a local computer and editing at an endpoint (like Brown's l a p to p) t h at 's re ce i v i n g a s t re a m e d pixel representation from a centralized virtual computer. In reality, there are times that the ex- perience isn't so flawless. "In the middle of the day, or especially near deadlines, with so many people hammering on it at the same time, it does get a little dicey. Your timeline starts to look like water droplets and when you press play, it just staggers and it skips and pops. Some- times, I literally have to pretend I'm in a spaceship and turn off all non-essential equipment, even video! And I have to edit by sound only. That's a super rare event, but we've all had to realize that some- times our internet just doesn't work. We all deal with it. When you're working day-of-air, there are just some things you have to let go," Brown said. ADR… At A Distance MPSE Award-winning ADR mixer Tami Treadwell, at WB Sound in Burbank, names their ADR…At A Distance (www. wbsound.com/adr-at-a-distance/) as her essential tech of the past year. Treadwell went from a full studio schedule to a pandemic-imposed hiatus, unsure of when she'd be able to return to work. Concurrently, WB Sound was de- veloping a remote ADR solution they call ADR…At A Distance. "While some truly amazing remote technology has allowed ADR work to continue and post-produc- tion to move forward, one of the most important elements of a successful ADR session — the in-person human interac- tion between a mixer, the performer, ADR supervisor, director, producer, etc. — has sadly been sidelined for the time being," Treadwell noted. With that said, Treadwell feels that ADR …At A Distance is an invaluable solution that utilizes all of the function- ality and flexibility of the studio's custom ADR System. And unlike some remote recording solutions, it gives full control to the mixer. Treadwell said, "I manage the feeds to and from the remote rigs in the same way I would if the actor were ADR at a Distance. P H O T O : W A R N E R B R O S .