Last Friday I participated (remotely – in the spirit of the event) in an Alpha Dog’s Editors Lounge about working working remotely in post production. Full disclosure: I was presenting Xprove, a tool I have a commercial interest in. You’ll be able to see the event on StudioDaily.com shortly. Michael Buday presented SyncVue as well.

Coming away from the event, it’s clear that if editing remotely isn’t fully here yet, it’s darn close – but only under very specific circumstances. The editor still must maintain a repository of source material locally. Currently I am working on a series for ABC that has over 1,500 tapes. Each of the shows needs access to all tapes. It’s not realistic to have six editors with access to the same media in six different locations, but why not?

Systems such as Avid’s Interplay are able to automatically create proxies. Rather than pushing those proxies to a centralized location, the system should be able to push them to multiple locations. As Avid has proved with the DNxHD 36 codec, proxies need not push us into a long GOP editing hell. I’d love it if Avid came up with a DNxHD 10 codec that could rival XDCAM’s MPEG-4 long GOP proxies. As we get 15-20 megabit fiber connections in our home studios, we could theoretically receive these proxies in realtime as they are generated.

It’s absolutely crazy to have editors spend hours a day in a car in places like NY, LA, Boston, Atlanta, and DC just to get to the bits. It’s cheaper and better for everyone to move bits instead of people. Of course such remote editing workflows will meet with resistance. If a NY production company can work with an editor in Peekskill, it can work with one in Manilla or Bangalore just as easily.

Xprove and SyncVue are great innovations, but they are baby steps. It’s time for Apple, Adobe, Avid, and company to figure out real-time, remote collaboration on a global scale.