Hello,

We have initiated a work at home pilot where I work and unfortunately being a video editor my work is tied to the avid workstation. I'm just curious if there is any method or technology available to enable someone to work on projects remotely.

Anyone try this or see a similar setup?

Thanks for any information.

-Jim Thomas

We do this a lot but it requires you have a system at home. You just take a copy of the media hone and cut away. Then you email the sequence in for conform.

Do you have a system at home?

Therein lies the problem. I was hoping there was a solution to log in remoteley and work on the station from a different location.

Screen refresh is the problem.  Even working locally at the system, a wrong or improperly setup nVidia driver will bring a system to it's knees.

Well, there are lots of VPN options but nothing that's gonna let you play media with any sort of speed or reliability.

Jim,

I do this all the time, in fact its a win/win for me and my employer.  I had to figure out if it was worth the cost of putting our new daughter into daycare, or to buy a system with MC soft.  At the time I opted for a MacBook Pro (about $3300) and Xpress Pro ($1700).  A few months later I won a copy of MC soft from Avid so life is good.  At any rate, the cost of buying the equipment was far cheaper than daycare and our quality of life is better as well.  Also consider how much you will save by not driving and parking.  I also wrote off the purchase of the computer and software (and drives and memory) as a nonreimbursable work expense since its my only computer for work email and other work related communications.

On the tech side of it you'll need to clone the media onto a firewire drive.  The easiest method is just to copy the whole drive if you have the space.  a 1TB drive is around $350 these days from Otherworld Computing (Quad interface).

It depends on your situation but maybe you can justify the cost, as I did.  Maybe your employer can loan you some equipment to do it, if they are truly committed to a work-from-home program.

Good luck

Brett

Thanks for the info everyone!

brettedits:

I had to figure out if it was worth the cost of putting our new daughter into daycare, or to buy a system with MC soft.

I was in a similar situation in late 2003, new daughter on the way and the cost of day care was going to force me either to get approval from my employer to work from home or to find another employer that paid more. 

I fronted all of the cost for the system and software (at the time PC and XDV 3.5) I ended up doing that for 3+ years until the company went belly up. 

We did the same thing with the drives, once footage was captured, an intern copied all the media onto an external FW drive for me and I brought it home.  The assistant editors would do their cuts and email me zip files of their bins.  I'd open them and go to town.  It worked out really well and I only had to go into the office 40 mins away once a week for 2 hrs for a production meeting and to upload my previous week's work.  

I tried remote operate the editing workstation one time, terminal server. An export for compression was faulty and I need to do it again. But it ends up that Avid want a dongle at my home, and at the workstation. And I have to take the car to work for make a new export.

I will not recomend this solution to serious editing, even if the dongle problems would be solved.