Will this remote workflow plan work?

[Greg B]

Hello,
My partner and I have identical XP/002R/Waves boxes with external USB drives for backup and DVD burners. We are 125 miles apart. I have most of the tracking gizmos, and my pal is an editing genius. I'd like to track at my location, burn a complete DVD of the PT session, and then he can go home and overdub and mix.

Even though the thought of collaborative mixing seems perilous , I would then hope he could simply email me the PT session file (*.pts), then I would place it in the proper folder, and I would see what he just saw and hear what he's done. Of course plugin presets wouldn't make it, but I'm sure that's only the tip of the iceberg.

The second choice would be to dump all files to DVD and use the US mail.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Greg

[KingFish]

Well if he consolodates audio, prints any FX to a playlist, or overdubs any new audio, you won't have Those files.

What about doing the sessions over the internet, I do it all the time... run an FTP server on one of the machines at the studio, and place sessions on the server, for musicians to download, and overdub, also, for backup... most of the sessions i'm currently working on are accessable via FTP, so... if i get to the studio, am missing audio, have a corrupt CD or DVD, I can download the session.

If you're not really tech savy enough to run an FTP server, with a DNS forwarding service, you can try other remote file access services, Like PC anywhere, Remote administrator... you can also set up an account in windows XP for your friend, enable "Remote desktop" and in the connection settings, I believe you can "mount remote drives"


FTP is still really the way to go for remote network access.

If you're going to do the DVD / Mail thing... make sure, you, and your friend, always "Save Session Copy In" and send those session copies to one another, it will gather any audio files, your friend may have created while mixing, and place it all in the audio files folder, where it belongs, in the off chance that his disk allocation picks a different location for newly created files.

[Greg B]

Thank you David.

Even if this is less than perfect, it's far better than waiting until we can get together to do ANYTHING! Good points that if he does overdubs, consolidates, or prints FX, those files I don't have.

I can envision the initial tracking session going home with him - he works on vocals, I work on guitars. Then we have the small technicality of importing the new audio to each session no matter which way the work is flowing. For us it will end up with a few tracks on CD and US mail. We get the performances correct in this fashion.

Getting the big files back and forth will likely be CD and US mail. One of us has broadband, and one of us is still 33.6 dialup. Given enough time, I could obtain FTP server SW and figure out how to allow access through my router on port 21 (I think), etc. But I lived through 26.4 dialup for two years and wouldn't wish over a meg on anybody.

So methinks that after the tracks/fade files are present and accounted for at both locations, the edits and plugin settings and midi will travel in the PTS file. That would be sufficient for us to present mixes to each other, tweak and send back.

Agreed that FTP is ideal when both locations have broadband. I wonder if he could go the the library to send files!! Wait a minute, maybe I don't want an account to my machine used on a public PC with Homeland Security watching...

[Chris Cavell]

Try reading the naras pro tools guidelines at charles dye's site...it should make this type of cross continent collab go a little smoother.

www.charlesdye.com

[Greg B]

Hey, you mean somebody has already been through this??

Whoa, what good fortune! Got the PDF. Will give it the study.

Thanks for this document.

Groovy groovy help.
Thanks,
Greg