Yes to cloud collaboration!

[JFreak]

guaranteed speeds are a whole another world compared to basic customer lines

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by JFreak

guaranteed speeds are a whole another world compared to basic customer lines

I know that but I also know what is and isn't available in my area, and sadly it's not a pretty picture.

[audioczar]

I for one am excited about the upcoming cloud collaboration. I do a good bit of ad work and see some great advantages to the new service. In the early 90's ISDN changed the way voiceover professionals and commercial audio studios do business. All of a sudden, studios producing commercial ads had the ability to broaden their talent pool to include any voice actor in the world as long as they had the ability to connect using a codec and an ISDN line. Producers could monitor and record almost in real time with talent from remote locations and the quality was very good. ISDN is expensive and the typical cost of a good codec, Telos, Musicam etc. are a minimum 3-5k. Source Elements came along in the early 2000's offering the ability to do the same with an internet connection using their software costing anywhere from 700-1,400.00. With a fast connection on both ends it was a much cheaper solution to the high monthly and hourly line ISDN charges. Source Connect has had a few issues with connection stability and dropouts in the past but it is stable enough now that I use it exclusively. The Avid cloud will allow the same and hopefully more solid connections for that type of work. Only drawback I see are that both ends will need PT 12 and some voice actors will be reluctant to purchase and learn the software. I'm not sure if PT First will allow the cloud, I kind of doubt it, but if it did that would really make me happy. The talent marketplace feature will also be a great thing for those of us who produce music for commercials as well. With the addition of adding metadata tags my music will be searchable and I can charge what I want to license a composition. I was one of the early adopters of Rocket Networks and when Digidesign purchased them I knew it would be just a matter of time before they rolled this out using that infrastructure. I'm excited about the possibilities.

AudioCzar

[tonepad]

So we were doing some "what ifs" the other day on our Post TV mix stage, and the one area re the collab idea that has some potential is this: being able to pop a fix directly to another PT session rig in situ. In our time tested workflow we all all have access to our server ie. The DX/MX mix rig, the FX/FOL mix rig, my laptop which is usually running a very large DX session and an iMac that has access to our mobile FX library. We fly time stamped fixes over to a folder on our server and when ready that gets spotted into one of the Mix rigs. All media for mixing is on the local rigs ... As is it's pretty fast because we do it in the background so we can stay independent of each other for most of the practical workflow. The remote/offsite collaborators post fix sessions in a similar offline manner. When we are not onstage we do the same routine. For Post, this model seems the most practical since everyone can be doing different things at different times and schedules. There is the odd occurrence of working on something at the same time, ie. in editorial mode for a sound design sequence where being able to have the same session running on 2 rigs could be a boon even if not true real time, ie laggy. This would work on my personal setup since I am one of the lucky ones able to have a FIOS account with a solid 50/50. I could buy more speed but that's pointless since all my remote users are on slower connections. Back on the stage there could be times where we could be in sync so to speak, but again we are all on different sessions...it isn't one size fits all in Post, wer'e using several different templates, and I don't need my DX session to be in a 5.1 template on a laptop. For the foreseeable future I think we'll continue with our own "collaboration" mode thank you very much.

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by musicman691

I know that but I also know what is and isn't available in my area, and sadly it's not a pretty picture.

It seems to be the trend, in the US anyway, for upload speeds to be only a fraction of download. My service gives me a great 125 Mbps down, but only 11 Mbps up. So even those of us with really good connections don't necessarily have really good connections

[JFreak]

"only 11mbps"

Comparing to ISDN line (64kbps) that is plenty. I still remember that I actually paid 200 euros a month for that ISDN line for guaranteed 64 KILOBYTES per second. That was in 1998 though.

[mesaone]

I do see your point, but it's "only" 11 Mbps given the high down speed. I'd like to split the difference and get something like 50 down / 50 up, but that doesn't exist in my area. It would be nice to send sessions as quickly as I can receive them, uploading a 7 gigabyte session is a chore.

[JFreak]

I hear you.

I pay 10 euros a month for 10/10 fibre that has unlimited data rate. Well, limited to 10/10 but theoretically I could download 24/7 for full speed without extra cost. I do like the idea that the up/down is same speed.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by JFreak

I hear you.

I pay 10 euros a month for 10/10 fibre that has unlimited data rate. Well, limited to 10/10 but theoretically I could download 24/7 for full speed without extra cost. I do like the idea that the up/down is same speed.

Theoretically my up and down load speeds are supposed to be the same but that never happens and Verizon won't do anything about it when I call about it.

[tonepad]

Unless you're on actual Verizon FIOS Fibre to the home you won't get anything solid. I pay for 50/50 and routinely test higher with Speedtest and the like. Verizon co-opts the FIOS name for service to the node and not to the house, so you have to make sure you're able to get the "last mile" fiber. Otherwise it's probly average speeds like the other ISPs, TWC, AT&T, Comcast, Charter etc. They only run fiber to your neighborhood and then it's copper downstream from there. Sad thing is I've been told by Verizon people that they are not rolling out any more fiber and in fact they're selling off alot of their wired holdings to Frontier Communications in much of the US...it's up to Google now.