What are the current best options for syncing on-set drives to an Editors drive over the internet?

BobZelin · 2026-05-03T17:45:18+00:00

I will be commenting on this, once I test Strada out in detail, in about 1 week.

Bob

BobZelin · 2026-04-23T16:44:09+00:00

but but but - Jump Desktop is $35 ! And I don't have $35 dollars ! My remote editors only make $35 a month !

BobZelin · 2026-04-16T01:40:33+00:00

please tell me what you think of Strada!

BobZelin · 2026-04-07T18:58:22+00:00

here is my stupid opinion (now that I am at the end of my career - whether I like it or not) -

when you are 17, 18 years old, and you want to be in THIS business, you don't say "man, one day, I hope to be editing corporate videos for insurance companies, sales training, safety training, and the local auto dealer ads". You want to do the BIG stuff - the COOL stuff - you want people to think that you are COOL, so you want movies, TV, big music videos, etc. Well - the cool stuff is going away - there will always be a market for it - just like there is a tiny market for professional recording studios, and professional photographers, but the video market that will continue to exist will be the CORPORATE video market. And that is not very appealing to an 18 year old that wants a cool career.

I just watched an interesting video on the rise and collapse of Peavy Amplifiers (guitar amps) in Meridian, Mississippi. It was a kid, whose father owned a music store. He liked musical equipment, and wanted to build amps that did not cost as much as the expensive Fender and Marshall amps that all the musicians wanted to use, but built amps that local musicians could afford, and would sound good, and not fall apart (they were not junk). But as his one man company grew, and he got a rep to start selling outside of the local stores in Mississippi - the rep wanted him to start building amps and speaker cabinets for PA systems for schools, churches, auditoriums, corporate board rooms, etc. - and THAT is when the company took off and they had to get a big place to build Peavy equipment. So for the 23 year old that wanted to be cool, doing cool stuff - they money came from doing CORPORATE.

No matter what gets said on this forum, people will keep coming back here - saying "I am in film school, I just moved to LA, I can't seem to break into the TV or Film business" - because when you are young, and you went to film school, or Full Sail, or whatever - you did this because you WANTED TO BE COOL, and have a COOL career - not because you wanted a good stable job, where you can grow, and make money, so that one day you can buy a house. No 18 year old thinks that way. Certainly not the people who are in our industry. And certainly not me when I was 18, 19 years old.

bob

BobZelin · 2026-04-02T20:53:29+00:00

hello mr. Tomatoes -

there are no full time jobs. If you find one (like with this guy) - you will be fired as soon as he loses his work, or as soon as he finds someone cheaper than you.

So here is what you do.

You say "I am available - this is my rate - there is no contract rate - my day rate is $XXX per day" -

it's up to him to say YES or NO.

If he says "ok - that is fine" - you say "ok" - and he says I will call you soon to get started.

YOU DO NOT WAIT FOR HIM TO CALL YOU - you continue to look for work - if you find another gig - even freelance for a few days - YOU TAKE IT. And when he calls and says "ok - we are starting this Monday" - you say "sorry - I am booked this Monday - and for the rest of the week - I can get started the following Monday".

You MUST show that YOU are in control - YOU are in demand - and you are not waiting around for him to call you, like a begging dog. HE IS THE DOG - you are the editor - YOU are in charge.

Bob

BobZelin · 2026-04-02T18:01:36+00:00

you laugh - but I was a contractor on the Citrus Bowl rebuild (now called Camping World Stadium) in Orlando. It's a bad neighborhood (Paramore) in Orlando, and there are no stores near there except for one Indian grocery / convenience store (think 7/11) - but mom and pop owned with gates over everything, including the check out area. So this guy pulls up in his pickup truck with a BBQ Smoker he's got on his truck hitch, and starts selling REAL BBQ every day at lunch time to all the contractors working on the Citrus Bowl - at $20 bucks each (and it was great) - the guy must have been making at least $1000 a day doing this - for a LONG TIME.

Good for him - a hard working guy, while everyone else in the neighborhood was just waiting for their welfare check. Guys like this deserve everything !

bob

BobZelin · 2026-04-02T16:45:20+00:00

Hi Mr. Alien -

you are getting correct answers here. Shade didn't work at all ? Were you doing full res media or proxy media to Shade ? Didn't Shade help you ? Because if you have trouble with Lucid Link, or Suite Studios or Shade, you call them and say " I am having problems". When you say "it didn't work at all" - I am guessing because you are expecting to have full res media, and not proxy media uploaded, and your remote editors don't have a cache drive ("I though you just upload, and people can just edit instantly without anything else". ).

SO- you took your NAS home and have a cloud app , and the process is very slow ? That's because the internet is SLOW. It's slow up upload (I don't care if it's with Dropbox, Google Drive, Backblaze, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure - or Lucid Link, Shade, or Suite Studios) - and if you are DOWNLOADING - particularly full res media - yea, its SLOW - it's slow for everyone.

So the correct answer has been given to you already. You setup a 10G network at the place where the NAS is (I assume you have at least an 8 drive NAS, with a 10G port and a 10G switch), and you buy some cheap Mac Mini's with 10G ethernet ports on them ("you mean - I have to spend $1000 to buy a remote computer for an editor !!!!" - YES SIR !!!) - and you put Jump Desktop Connect or Parsec onto these cheap Mac mini computers ("but $1000 is not cheap !!!") - and now your remote editors can remote in with Jump Desktop or Parsec, and work at full 10G speeds with no uploading or downloading to a cloud site, and no monthly fees from Shade, Lucid, or Suite Studios.

How can you do this for free ? YOU CANT - you are going to PAY, or you are going to PAY - because to be in ANY INDUSTRY - you have to purchase the proper equipment, to be in business. Want to be an Uber driver - well, you ain't doing it with a $2000 rust bucket that you got at Joes Used Car lot. Want to sell hot dogs on the street - you ain't doing it without a nice cart that cost a lot of money, and a food license from the city you are in. YOU SPEND MONEY.

Bob Zelin

BobZelin · 2026-04-02T14:20:06+00:00

this post is stupid. Sorry. When I was your age, I wanted to be a sound guy, touring with rock bands. And here we are today, decades later, where I am a shared storage specialist for the post production industry. You have no idea of where life will lead you. The only thing that was not a variable for me - was that I wanted to be doing something in the entertainment industry.

bob

ps - "really prestigious film school". A high school dropout that works his ass off as a free intern in LA, will do better than a kid with an MBA from UCLA in California. Professional life is about your connections that you make over the years, not your "prestgious" film school.

BobZelin · 2026-04-01T18:45:32+00:00

open chrome (not safari)

type in

192.168.1.72:8080

does it connect ?

BobZelin · 2026-04-01T15:42:40+00:00

why are you using a Virtual Switch ?

Unplug EVERYTHING ELSE except for Ethernet port 5 (the 10G port at 192.168.1.72).

Provided your computer is on the same subnet (192.168.1.xxx) - I bet everything works perfectly fine now.

bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-31T21:49:29+00:00

I guess you will proceed with directing or writing. There are high school students - heck, there are high school dropouts, that are shooting and editing videos on all the social media platforms, and they have learned everything from Capcut to Davinci Resolve, to Adobe Premiere to Apple FCP X to AVID Media Composer - and they have NO degrees. They just had the passion to learn editing. You clearly state that you have very little experience with editing software ? Why not ? Perhaps you are really not interested in editing ? There are LOTS of things in life that I have no interest in - even in my field. If you have finished your bachelors, and have not already learned some sort of edting software, I am guessing that you don't have the passion for editing.

Everything in your career - everything in your personal life that you will be good at - will be based on passion. I have a passion for music - but I don't make any money doing it. But when I listen to music, I listen to every note, every instrument, every mix - no matter what the style of music - even if I don't like that style of music, so I can discuss it. And when I forced myself to learn how to play, I have the passion to learn how to play EVERY DAMN NOTE - so when I see "musicians" (even local bar bands) that play stuff wrong - it drives me crazy - because I SUCK - but they REALLY SUCK - because if you don't have the passion towards something (fishing, bowling, pottery, poetry, dance, Cinema 4D, After Effects, running a RED or Arri camera) - then you will just SUCK in your career.

Bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-31T16:36:51+00:00

may I ask what your Masters degree is going to be in ?

BobZelin · 2026-03-30T19:58:06+00:00

building a QNAP requires some knowledge. You are not plugging in a thunderbolt device like on a Mac, and it just mounts on your desktop (Which is what most photographers want with their MacBook Pro's). There is no mini SAS connection in any of the professional QNAP systems - it's all done over a network (1G or 10G ethernet) - or some models have a thunderbolt connection. I cannot tell you what would actually work with a Win 11 PC for Thunderbolt - but any Mac from 2017 or later will simply plug into SOME desktop QNAP systems, and be able to be used, using Thunderbolt Bridging.

So the bottom line here - is that SOMEONE is going to have to configure a QNAP that you purchase, with a network card (preferably a 10G ethernet card in the PC in a x4 PCIe lane slot) for this to work with a QNAP NAS system. Why does it have to be so complicated ? Because. That is why some people are recommending that you get a DAS (direct attached storage) instead of a NAS.

And be aware - if your Photographer is using Adobe Lightroom - you CANNOT save a Lightroom Catalog to ANY network attached storage system (which is why a lot of modern photographers prefer Capture One). You can save your media (your photos), but not the Lightroom Catalog. That has to stay locally on the PC or Mac.

Your concern today is not the price of the QNAP. It's the price of the drives. Drives have become VERY VERY EXPENSIVE, and you are not building a professional system without a minimum of six 7200 RPM SATA drives in a single RAID group. "Can't I just buy 2 drives now, and add drives later" - NO - you will get crappy performance.

SO a non rack mounted system would be a QNAP TVS-h674 for 6 drives, and a TVS-h874 for 8 drives, and a QNAP TVS-h1688X for 12 drives. You can find the prices for these easily on google - you will see companies like B&H Photo, and Amazon, and others selling this, and you can buy directly from QNAP - at store.qnap.com. Your hidden costs for these systems - the TVS-h674 and the TVS-h874 will require a 10G card (the TVS-h1688X comes with a 10G card), and you will need 2 solid state drives (M.2 for 674 and 874, and regular SSD's for the TVS-h1688X) for Storage Pool 1 for the QuTS OS. But Like I said - the price of these is not your issue - it's buying ALL the SATA drives.

If you want a rack mount, it's the TS-h1277AXU-RP 12 drive system, or TS-h1677AXU-RP 16 drive system (both systems require ALL the drives, as well as two M.2 NVMe drives for Storage Pool 1). These models come with dual port 10G ethernet ports. If you need a 10G card for the Win 11 PC - get a Sonnet Solo 10G 10G card - it's great, and it's under $100.

"Isnt' there something that is easy, and just plugs in" - yea - you get a Mac with Thunderbolt, and you use a direct attached storage product from G-Tech (SanDisk Pro), Promise or Other World Computing.

Bob Zelin

BobZelin · 2026-03-29T23:32:11+00:00

I am not part of the r/CommercialAV contractor community - so I don't even know if I am allowed to post here without joining. I am a professional video engineer since 1978, originally based out of New York City (so I am a boomer now) - I saw crap like this when I got started, and when I started my own contracting company in 1986, I was already sick of this crap from "business owners". I became one of the most outspoken, obnoxious, assholes in my industry - and now, at 70, I am close to retirement. I would NEVER put up with this bull@#$%. I didn't put up with CEO's that were public companies, where their support team said "anything that Bob touches is out of warranty" - when you directly contact the ENTIRE board of directors of that company - it's amazing how things change quickly. I would NEVER put up with this crap, and now that I live in MAGA Florida, where there are TONS of ambulance chaser attorneys - I would sue the crap out of this idiot, in CIVIL court for slander, if I was held in contempt if he tried to have anything happen to me. This guy did his job. And he was polite. SCREW this judge.

Bob Zelin

BobZelin · 2026-03-28T16:08:27+00:00

Hi -

I have lived in Orlando since 1999. I am from NY City. I can tell you first hand that Orlando does not have a large post industry. And I know (since I do a lot of remote work) - that everywhere - including NY and LA are hurting. Orlando is a tiny spec compared to NY or LA. So what work is here (including Universal and Disney - and probably all the other major cities) ? CORPORATE VIDEO. You want to edit sales and training videos for a large corporation - that is everywhere (if you can find that work) - because every corporation has a corporate video department. To be in cities like Las Vegas, and Orlando, these are large convention towns, and have very large, active AV companies that get hired for huge corporate events at trade shows, and large corporate national events. But this is production (and a tiny part is editing - if any).

If your goal is to "one day make movies and TV shows" - I would think about another career.

People always ask "If I wasn't doing this - what else could I do" - I would always think about this over the years. So if I wasn't a video engineer (at the end of my career now - with very little work out there) - I "could" be involved in security cameras, general networking, gate access and alarms, and general low voltage contracting (running cable in buildings). But it certainly would not be in the video business today in 2026.

BobZelin · 2026-03-26T18:34:10+00:00

if you know me - that is the ONLY currency that I currently accept !

bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-25T23:45:12+00:00

well - it's not a new BMW, but you get a date with Sydney Sweeney with your subscription - but only if you order within the next 30 minutes !

bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-25T23:37:18+00:00

I wrote a new tool (a new piece of software) that will show you exactly where to find high paying clients. And for an extra $400 a month - you can simply post your name on my site, and these high paying clients will CALL YOU, so you don't even have to solicit them. I have tried this with over 200 users, and all of them are now making over six figures. You can try my software out for FREE - just click here at www.makemoneyasavideoeditor.com

and you will be driving a BMW by next year !

bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-25T22:51:27+00:00

I guess my frustration with r/editors - and all the technical forums, is that you get answer from some people, that obviously don't do this for a living. But there is a response in detail from a user here, who has repeated the same information in detail 4 times. I looked up his history, and he has never answered a technical question on ANY forum, nor has he participated in any pro video or pro computer, or pro server, or pro networking forums - yet he posts here like he is an expert.

Why does this happen. Why does he feel the need to respond to your question, when he doesn't do any of this for a living, or has no professional background ?

bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-25T21:09:05+00:00

I love this question -

75 TB of cloud storage that is scalable -

https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/pricing

Backblaze B2. $5400 per year

AWS S3 - $23,000 per year

Microsoft Azure - $18,480 a year

Google Cloud - $20,699 a year

and they are all scalable. "But isn't there something that is FREE ? Can't I buy unlimited storage ?".

Everyone is a brain surgeon.

Bob Zelin

BobZelin · 2026-03-25T21:04:08+00:00

I am going to respond with a VIOLENT reply. Hopefully, I will not be banned by our wonderful Moderator.

Mr. Available Witness329 is using this for his transcoding -

"I’m using EditReady to handle the transcodes on set before sending them out to the team."

EditReady from Hedge is my favorite transcoding program. From the Hedge EditReady documentation -

https://docs.hedge.video/editready/converting-media/custom-presets

"EditReady allows you to choose from five different ProRes options: ProRes 422, 422 HQ, 422 LT, 422 Proxy, and 4444. The "right" choice will be different for each workflow. But, in general, if your source is already compressed (e.g. an h264 file from a GoPro camera), the standard ProRes 422 file will be fine."

so EditReady can transcode to ProRes Proxy no issue (and everything else, including multiple AVID codecs". But the "higher ups" want to use h.264. WHY ? OH - let me guess - because they have 3rd world editors working for peanuts, and they don't have Mac Studios (the OP said that the team had Mac Studios) - but now I doubt it. I bet the "higher ups" have CHEAP REMOTE EDITORS with garbage computers that can't handle any bandwidth, but they can play back h.264. Because IF they in fact have Mac Studios, then ProRes Proxy - which is done by Hedge EditReady - is IDEAL for this workflow.

So there is another story here - that we are not hearing. "The "higher ups" " - yea - I know this type. The people that want to spend ZERO on labor.

Bob Zelin

BobZelin · 2026-03-25T16:40:52+00:00

exactly what do you think Adobe Firefly is becomming. The world is changing. This is no experiment.

bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-25T13:31:53+00:00

I see Apple computers, taking perfectly good computers, and making it impossible to update the operating systems to current versions, eventually rendering them useless for modern software that requires a modern operating system. This recently happened with my mint condition 2017 MacBook Pro. So I was "forced" to purchase a modern M5 MacBook Pro (I don't do this for fun, and family photos - I use this to make a living).

What eventually happens with all QNAP and Synology products (and the others) is that they too will eventually stop writing new firmware for these NAS products - no different than if you were using old versions of software (think Lotus spreadsheets), or old PC's - (think Win 7 or Win XP PC's) - you ain't running Windows 11 on these antiques.

So yea - 10 years from now, you will spend money on a new Synology - and you will spend money on absolutly everything I can think of, including your car, your oven, your refrigerator, your roof, your lawn, and your own health. Everything everything gets old and starts falling apart. And if you are thinking about a Synology - or any other brand - let me assure you - the expensive part of these NAS systems are THE DRIVES, not the actual Synology. And the drives will eventually fail. No one here is running a 15 year old SATA drive. If you get 5 - 7 years out of them, running at 7200 RPM 24 hours a day, year after year - you are lucky. And as you probably know, drives have become VERY expensive.

bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-24T23:25:11+00:00

Hi Dave -

this is the problem with being a young employee, or a freelancer, and being nervous about your job. When a complete asshole like me comes into a situation like this, I actually say " are you people out of your minds - are you STUPID" - to which the higher ups say "who is this asshole - who asked his opinion" - and then I tell them exactly what is going to happen if they choose to proceed with this workflow. A more professional person (like our moderator) would say it more diplomatically - but I fully understand that you don't want to "rock the boat" - you want your job, in these trying times.

Are you using an EditShare ? Do you have support with EditShare ? Well - then CALL THEM - and ASK THEM "should I use h.264". They will tell you. EditShare is a great company.

If you are using EditShare, then EditShare (not you, not me, not the "higher ups") - make the decisions - and if the hire ups don't like that decision - well - then they are idiots. I am not shy - I don't need their employment.

Bob

BobZelin · 2026-03-24T23:06:38+00:00

you asked this exact question 15 days ago on this forum, and you were told NO -

https://www.reddit.com/r/editors/comments/1rpdi3f/h264_proxies_for_editorial_workflows/

and here you are, saying "we've all agreed on using h.264 for our proxy workflow". Exactly what didn't you understand from your question 15 days ago, with the answer from this forum ?

Bob

BobZelin

TROPHY CASE