[HN Gopher] Why Apple's Severance gets edited over remote deskto...
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Why Apple's Severance gets edited over remote desktop software
Author : shortformblog
Score : 287 points
Date : 2025-03-29 18:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tedium.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (tedium.co)
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Oh yeah, this is completely true. It would be a shoebox that
| barely ran Windows 98 and it wouldn't make much difference, and
| Apple's tools have completely failed to keep pace with this
| reality.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Makes sense why the framerate is so bad during some of the
| playback scenes. Also makes sense as multiple editors will be
| sharing the same editing tasks and it's easier to share a single
| resource with the scenes loaded that are connected to local
| storage, and manipulate remotely, versus trying to pull that
| content to your machine and then push it back.
| chris_pie wrote:
| I have to say, I laughed when I noticed the framerate, in
| what's (in a way) a hardware ad
| eddieroger wrote:
| Saving a click and a lot of editorializing:
|
| * More powerful machines centrally located
|
| * COVID-19 practices make lots of people in one place undesirable
|
| * It's easy for rogue editors to steal stuff, and this prevents
| that
| curiousgal wrote:
| We've had this setup in the investment bank where I work for a
| couple of years now, Citrix though.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| That was a lot of words to reiterate that Apple is a consumer
| focused company. Not enterprise or B2B.
| turtletontine wrote:
| Bingo. So many decisions made perfect sense once I realized
| Apple is basically a lifestyle brand that makes electronics,
| and Microsoft is a massive bureaucratic B2B conglomerate.
| Totally explained Microsoft's ineptitude with consumer facing
| products (remember Windows Phone? Zune?), yet they have a
| stranglehold on the business world. This is the opposite: Apple
| is designed for locking individuals into its lifestyle (or
| ecosystem, if you prefer), and has mostly given up on
| enterprise facing products.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| Heh, it sure would be nice if they made a computer that was
| explicitly for getting work done (hell, they could call it a
| "workstation"). I miss the days when big tech still saw a
| market for this ...
| robocat wrote:
| I also wish Microsoft would treat developers as a seperate
| customer segment to market to.
|
| When the people using your tools hate the tools, that isn't
| a good sign.
| mulmen wrote:
| Between GitHub, VS Code, and TypeScript it is hard to
| make the case Microsoft doesn't focus on developers as a
| segment.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| It's not a good sign if they have the choice to use
| different tools. But if microsoft can make sure they
| don't have a choice it's a neutral sign!
| josephg wrote:
| What are you referring to? Microsoft's developer tools
| are top notch. I'd pick visual studio over Xcode any day
| of the week - Xcode is so crazy buggy that I don't know
| how anyone at Apple gets work done on it. And VSCode is
| probably the most popular ide on the planet.
| kbolino wrote:
| I'm sure they could do more, but ...
|
| They own GitHub, they make Visual Studio Code, they made
| C#/.NET open-source and cross-platform, they added Linux
| support to Windows (twice), and they created WinGet, just
| off the top of my head.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Developers developers developers developers
| int_19h wrote:
| Stuff like this?
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-drive/
| josephg wrote:
| They do - that's the point of the Mac Pro. The problem is
| software. Lots of expensive pcie ports won't help much when
| you can't put a GPU in any of them to use cuda and such.
|
| There's also so much inefficient, bloated crap that ships
| with modern macOS that I would never pick it for a proper
| workstation these days. I have CPU meters in the system
| tray, and there's always some stupid process gobbling up
| all my spare cycles. The other day it was some automatic
| iPhone backup process. (Why was that using so much cpu,
| Apple?). Sometimes it's indexing my hard drive, or looking
| for faces in photos, or who knows what stupid thing. It's
| always something, and its almost always first party
| software.
|
| In comparison, the cores on my Linux workstation are
| whisper quiet, and usually idle at 0%. The computer waits
| for me to give it work.
| astrange wrote:
| There is no reason to care about this. There's two or
| three different mechanisms that stop background processes
| from having any effect on actual work you're doing.
|
| (Namely background QoS, it only runs on the efficiency
| cores, and more expensive activities stop when the user
| is active.)
|
| If you're having an actual specific problem report it
| with Feedback Assistant. If you aren't, I recommend
| removing all that useless monitoring stuff and getting an
| outdoor hobby.
|
| As an actual performance engineer I've basically never in
| my life gotten a useful report from someone looking at
| those every day. Although other vibes based bugs like "I
| feel like my battery life is bad lately" often do find
| something.
| gopher_space wrote:
| If you were able to keep your housekeeping out of my way
| I wouldn't have been looking at metrics in the first
| place.
|
| The "bug" here is system activity I'm not deliberately
| invoking.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The remote computers are still Macs.
| mulmen wrote:
| Microsoft also created the Xbox and every developer I know
| runs a Macbook.
| dboreham wrote:
| No MacBook here.
| walrus01 wrote:
| TBH it's _still_ possible to use a macbook air as basically a
| fancy unix-like workstation that has great battery life, and
| not buy into any of the apple ecosystem. No icloud account,
| no icloud backup, no iphone, no use of itunes or appletv, no
| apple synchronization of anything. The day that stops being
| viable is the day I stop buying them.
|
| The extent of my 'cloud' involvement with apple is the
| operating system software update mechanism and having an
| account to download Xcode, so that I can install compiler +
| macports on a new machine.
| mattl wrote:
| I'd love to know what Apple uses internally for stuff like
| email and calendaring.
|
| I'm fairly sure they don't use iCloud which is why some of that
| stuff is still less than desirable.
|
| We can probably assume that Microsoft uses some kind of
| Exchange set up and Google will use a version of Gmail.
|
| Whenever I meet with people from Apple, it's over WebEx.
|
| I heard a rumor that they use some Oracle enterprise groupware,
| which is presumably
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Beehive
| rcarmo wrote:
| They use Oracle mail servers for their corporate e-mail.
| Ironically, the direct descendant of the Sun Internet Mail
| Service software I wrestled with back in the early 2000s.
| mattl wrote:
| Any idea what Oracle's mail server is called? Is it the
| thing I linked?
|
| I don't find it all that surprising:
|
| - Sun/NeXT were doing stuff together before Apple and NeXT
| merged
|
| - Lots of Java stuff at Apple immediately following the
| merger including a Cocoa-Java bridge and WebObjects is
| rewritten in Java
|
| - Oracle/Sun stuff doesn't need to be run on Windows
|
| - Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were good friends
| rcarmo wrote:
| Yeah: Oracle Communications Messaging Server (8.1 and
| above over the past 5 years).
| alwillis wrote:
| How long before these new Apple-made servers are available (or
| a variant) as a backend for video editing?
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...
|
| _Opening a New Manufacturing Facility in Houston_
|
| As part of its new U.S. investments, Apple will work with
| manufacturing partners to begin production of servers in
| Houston later this year. A 250,000-square-foot server
| manufacturing facility, slated to open in 2026, will create
| thousands of jobs.
|
| Previously manufactured outside the U.S., the servers that will
| soon be assembled in Houston play a key role in powering Apple
| Intelligence, and are the foundation of Private Cloud Compute,
| which combines powerful AI processing with the most advanced
| security architecture ever deployed at scale for AI cloud
| computing. The servers bring together years of R&D by Apple
| engineers, and deliver the industry-leading security and
| performance of Apple silicon to the data center.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| I would like to use this comment to mention Parsec. It's
| unbelievable how much snappier it feels compared to the default
| Screen Sharing. What is their secret sauce?!
|
| I just wish it didn't require an internet connection for
| authentication
| kjeldsendk wrote:
| On gpu encoding/decoding of the frame buffer
| TZubiri wrote:
| How would it not require an internet connection lmao, it's a
| remote connection tool
| kjeldsendk wrote:
| I think op meant cloud based in the sense you have to create
| a user account on their site and everything goes through
| that.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Remote desktop between computers on a local network
| xoa wrote:
| > _How would it not require an internet connection lmao, it
| 's a remote connection tool_
|
| I'm kinda surprised you've managed to be on HN for 5 years
| and never come across the concept of a "LAN" or "VPN" before,
| but I guess you're one of today's lucky 10000. To the first,
| sometimes you have machines (or VMs) local to your own
| network but in another physical location that you'd like to
| be able to access from your own system. It's a fairly
| significant use case, and one where no internet connection is
| involved whatsoever. For example it's generally desirable to
| locate powerful (and in turn generally loud) servers and
| associated gear (including environmental control, redundant
| power etc) in physically isolated locations from where the
| humans are working for noise reasons if nothing else, though
| security and efficiency are important as well. While it's
| possible to pipe raw video over IP, a quality remote desktop
| solution will generally be more flexible/scalable and doesn't
| require special (expensive) extra hardware and potentially
| additional fiber.
|
| And for systems located on other LANs remote from your own,
| you can use a VPN to link them securely as if they had a
| direct physical (though higher latency/more jittery) link,
| again avoiding any exposure to the public net. That then
| reduces to the above. In both cases it's desirable to have
| zero unnecessary 3rd party dependencies.
| ibeff wrote:
| > I'm kinda surprised you've managed to be on HN for 5
| years and never come across the concept of a "LAN" or "VPN"
| before
|
| Unnecessary snark.
| xoa wrote:
| It's not snark, in your reply you for whatever reason cut
| out the context at the end of the sentence. "Lucky 10k"
| is referring to this xkcd comic [0] which I thought was a
| pretty good one and I've tried to take to heart. I was
| genuinely surprised, but that's the point, what one
| thinks is "common sense" or "everyone knows" is always
| going to be brand new to someone every single day. It's
| happened to me lots, and is one of the delights of HN, to
| learn about a whole new set of use cases you've never
| considered before. In this case maybe it will lead them
| to consider how it might be useful in their own offices
| or homes for that matter. Making a powerful machine run
| quietly is both challenging and can be fairly expensive.
| But if you have the physical space available, then you
| may be able to just use powerful, cheap loud fans by
| virtue of putting it in an area of a basement or the like
| away from living space/home office and accessing it
| remotely. Depending on how you do so the quality can be
| the same as if you were sitting in front of it.
|
| ----
|
| 0: https://xkcd.com/1053/
| Syzygies wrote:
| Cloudless Fluid requires a Teams Enterprise subscription. Or
| one can manually enter IP addresses. Their default is cloud
| mediation, so yes, they presume a working internet
| connection.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Try Moonlight, similar tech but open/no cloud auth. Works
| better over local networks though as opposed to internet (which
| you need to set up via vpn/portforward etc)
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Sadly seems to be NVIDIA/PC? only.
| wrigby wrote:
| This bummed me out, but it looks like it's not? From the
| Sunshine (server) GitHub page[1]: Sunshine
| is a self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight. Offering
| low latency, cloud gaming server capabilities with support
| for AMD, Intel, and Nvidia GPUs for hardware encoding.
| Software encoding is also available.
|
| 1: https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think it was originally all NVIDIA proprietary, then got
| reverse engineered OSS client(Moonlight), then got RE'd OSS
| server(Sunshine).
| xoa wrote:
| Sunshine/Moonlight are awesome, but fwiw in this specific
| context it's worth noting that macOS support with Sunshine is
| still extremely experimental and janky. It's Homebrew only
| for now, and when I tried it out last the main release didn't
| install at all, only the beta. And then locally even over a
| 10 gig network while the image quality was great the latency
| was abysmal, even before other oddities. I will say this is
| enormous improvement over even a year ago, but given the
| initial gaming focused use case I suspect that (not at all
| unreasonably!) they've prioritized client capabilities when
| it comes to Macs for now.
| jdboyd wrote:
| Last I looked, they didn't support passing through USB
| devices like Wacom tablets or edit controllers or space mice.
| I am eager for that stuff to work so that I can start using
| moonlight/sunshine for more of my work.
| thomasjudge wrote:
| Is there a free alternative to Screen Sharing that is more
| performant? I'm just surprised at the latency and cpu usage of
| Screen Sharing on my lan. (Mac specific)
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| NoMachine
| rcarmo wrote:
| Just don't. It is janky and buggy and keeps coming up time
| and time again, but it is not a real solution.
| kjeldsendk wrote:
| Avid does have a cloud based solution. This isn't that.
|
| It's a clever way to have your media centralized and yet have
| access to editors all over the world.
|
| And a modern AVID system does not struggle with a few editors
| accessing the same footage.
|
| First of all it's usually a proxy format and Secondly the storage
| can deliver a combined 800MB pr box sustained for x number of
| editors at the same time.
|
| Yes I avid feel free to ask.
| fragmede wrote:
| Have you used an Editshare?
| kjeldsendk wrote:
| I actually tried the first version.. back in the day. But
| even if NEXIS is stupid expensive it's still acceptable if
| you have the productions for it.
|
| One of the main reasons it's used in larger post houses is
| the hardware and software support that is world wide with
| people on site if needed.
| johnklos wrote:
| Nothing these days "struggle(s) with a few editors accessing
| the same footage".
|
| AVID hasn't been at the forefront of video editing since the
| Avid/1 / ABVB days. They sell a reasonably usable program with
| horrible hardware (since Meridien hardware - it's good they
| finally let us use other hardware such as BlackMagic), but
| never truly fix large problems. People therefore stay on a
| specific version of the software for ages, because everyone is
| scared of new and different bugs.
|
| AVID's shared media offerings are tenfold the cost of other
| storage options simply because they have a flag on the mounted
| volumes that tells Media Composer to allow project and media
| sharing. "800MB pr box sustained" means nothing because anyone
| can do that easily with commodity hardware.
|
| In other words, AVID is milking their cash cow and they really
| don't innovate or even try to offer a good product.
|
| Apple, on the other hand, destroyed their professional editing
| products, then replaced them with decent tools, but ones that
| are worlds different. Many people have mixed feelings about
| this. On the other hand, if you want to edit 8K ProRes, Final
| Cut Pro makes it simple on any ARM-based Mac.
| kjeldsendk wrote:
| What's your experience based on? Do you work in post
| production on big projects?
|
| It's their dependency on Blackmagic that's been there biggest
| problem the past 5 years.
|
| Meridian was light years ahead of the competition. The
| firewire based adrenaline sucked.
|
| And you won't find anyone complaining about their DX series
| just to bad they dropped that.
|
| And your really not understanding the way avid nexis works if
| you think it's just a flag
| johnklos wrote:
| First, facts don't rely on the amount of experience the
| person sharing them has. But I do get that it's easier to
| take someone at their word when they have lots of
| experience, so yes, I've worked on all sorts of projects of
| all sizes.
|
| I think you've been sold a bunch of ideas. For instance,
| Avid has no dependency on Blackmagic. They use Open IO,
| which means you can use any card that supports Open IO,
| whether Aja, Blackmagic, Bluefish, Matrox, whatever.
|
| Nexus / ISIS isn't special. The flag is literally just a
| flag that tells Media Composer to enable bin and media
| sharing. It can be enabled on any kind of sharing - NFS,
| AFS, SMB, et cetera. For example, check out Mimiq software
| for enabling it wherever you want.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I spent some time a while back thinking about a web-native
| video editing tool with very lightweight client demands. This
| came up after watching all those LTT videos about their storage
| & networking misadventures around the editors. It seems
| something approximating this (or superior to it) has already
| been developed.
|
| The way you develop & manage the proxies appears to be the
| biggest part of the battle in making things go fast. There's no
| reason for editor workstations to be operating with the full
| res native material unless theres a targeted reason to do so.
| kjeldsendk wrote:
| Before Covid your idea was the one everyone was pursuing,
| including AVID with a embarrassing system that i never saw a
| in a satisfying version.
|
| With Covid remote access became the norm and the online/proxy
| workflow more or less died. Avid still has a working version
| (better than the original) but it's widely used.
|
| Proxies are used for several reasons, expensive storage,
| heavy codecs at high bitrates or multicams.
|
| They are typically avoided whenever you can because the
| online part of a proxy based workflow can be a challenge. And
| especially if you have tight deadlines you want all the
| variables out of the way.
| viraptor wrote:
| LTT is probably not a good/representative example for
| anything. They'll do infra stunts for content, then it will
| fail and they'll get content from the failure and content
| from the new thing. It's in their interest to be slightly on
| the bleeding edge and slightly janky while having access to
| subsidised hardware.
|
| And I mean that in a completely positive "it's awesome" way.
| Just... not the problems anyone else should be facing.
| maphale wrote:
| I Avid too. And manage two sizable (300+ virtualized editors)
| on-premise VDI systems, and one bigger(somedays 600+) AWS-based
| one that holds more Adobe than Avid. Remote experience is a
| bandwidth and latency thing more than anything else, but the
| technology is limited - for example you can't do a good
| ProTools system virtualized with a control surface and sync can
| be a real pain to sort out. As for Avid's solutions to the
| problem: they do it a couple of ways:
|
| - Composer/Nexis all hosted on Cloud (AWS): fine, but pricy and
| the Nexis experience is meh
|
| - Composer hosted Cloud/Nexis hosted on Prem: actually works
| well, but you need to have a direct-connect to AWS (the network
| can be pricey)
|
| - Composer on on-premise VDI/Nexis hosted on Prem: works really
| well, and I have a bias towards this instead of fully in cloud
| for not only security reasons since the TCO is less
|
| - Composer Cloud (or whatever they call it today - used to
| Composer Sphere): this is a setup where instead you stream
| real-time proxy to the Composer from MediaCentral. You can
| download hi-res media if you need to. It works ok, but it more
| suited for News workflows. Security is a thing with this
| solution.
|
| - Adobe/OpenDrives on AWS: I mention this, because we do this
| too. This has all sorts of things to talk about, and is pretty
| good, but, again, you gotta know what you are doing.
|
| For the on-premise ones, VMWare is our Hypervisor of choice,
| and, yup, we are looking for other options. And we have all the
| usual IT problems: domain management, updates, roaming
| desktops, etc.
|
| If you are looking for 3rd-monitor image viewing (like in the
| old days with hardware), you can swing NDI or 2110. NDI is ok,
| and for 2110 you need a network and router to handle it.
| kjeldsendk wrote:
| During covid I ran a home made ndi solution for remote color
| correction.
|
| It worked.. Kind a
| TZubiri wrote:
| Looks good, don't see the drawback for this usecase
|
| "These editors aren't working on Macs, per se. They're working
| around them. Sure, there's an Apple logo in the top-left corner
| (two, actually), but it feels superfluous, knowing that the
| software isn't directly on the machine and it just as easily be
| running on a Windows or Linux box a thousand miles away"
|
| But the source AND target of the remote connections are both
| macs, pretty straightforward
| leshenka wrote:
| the point they make is that if you're using a remote desktop
| program to remotely edit videos you don't need a mac on the
| client side.
|
| what would have been a far better PR is if Final Cut offered
| enterprise solution with "server" part that holds videos and
| does the heavy lifting and "client" part that works with
| miniatures doesn't let you export anything to disk and all that
| ajaimk wrote:
| The real reason is cause we can. The technology and internet
| speeds have evolved to make editing video over RDP possible.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| It looks like an absolutely _brutal_ way to edit video[1], even
| with an incredible internet connection. This is a compromise
| courtesy of the reality of the Apple hardware ecosystem and not
| some sort of ideal way of working.
|
| Sometimes I play Civilization through an RDP connection to my
| desktop box below my desk over a dedicated ethernet connection
| and that's bad enough. Trying to do full video editing, with
| critical concerns over every pixel, color and timing....oof!
|
| [1] - as they note, you can see him doing it over the remote
| connection and it looks hurky-jerk disastrous.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _This is a compromise courtesy of the reality of the Apple
| hardware ecosystem..._
|
| They're still editing on a Mac, just remotely, which is how
| you know that this choice is not a compromise caused by the
| Apple hardware ecosystem.
| harrall wrote:
| I was a diehard PC person but getting colors to display
| right and consistently on Apple hardware is much easier...
| so I admitted defeat.
|
| p.s. I'm the guy that will point out that one of your white
| lightbulbs has a slight greener tint over your other white
| lightbulbs (aka it's not slight to me).
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It's crazy how much of a mess color management is on
| Windows, even now. I used to try to use a calibrator-
| produced profile for my gaming PC's monitor but keeping
| it applied was hacky and it still didn't work everywhere.
| harrall wrote:
| Tell me about it. I even got a monitor color calibration
| probe and it was not cheap.
|
| My next step was going to buy a new monitor too but then
| I was like... F it I'll just buy a Mac and call it a day.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| It is pretty obvious that their use of Apple hardware is
| forced on them by Apple for this show.
|
| As said in TFA, he could have had a Chromebook on his desk.
| And for that matter he could have been remoted into a
| massive server from that Chromebook with a cluster of
| virtualized GPUs, hosting a dozen editors on a monster
| backbone. Apple has nothing like that, so instead they have
| like a NAS connected to a dozen Macs back in the office to
| host a dozen editors. It's super dodgy, and is a limit,
| and, as is the point of the article, kind of highlights
| some serious gaps in Apple's hardware ecosystem.
|
| They're using Avid and Ableton for this show, and then some
| third party remoting to connect to the Macs. This wasn't
| really an Apple-first production.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| There are much better solutions for LAN game streaming. Using
| RDP is... curious
| llm_nerd wrote:
| If the discussion was about the best way to play games
| remotely, your curious would be a great sneer. But it
| isn't. It's about someone doing full-screen video editing
| over a remote connection. And FWIW, remoting Civilization
| is a magnitude easier than full-screen video editing, so my
| comparison was to something much simpler.
|
| I don't _only_ play Civilization. In fact the reason I have
| the Windows box under my desk is for CUDA work on a big GPU
| while my main computer is an M4 Mac. And FWIW, Steam Remote
| Play is utter dogshit compared to RDP. RDP is actually one
| of the best remoting technologies.
|
| Still can't make highly dynamic desktops super ideal
| remote.
| fragmede wrote:
| For all the failings of Google at running the service as
| a product to consumers, Stadia actually worked. GeForce
| Now/others are still around. It's absolutely down to the
| connection, but the technology's there.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Indeed, I still have a GeForce Now "founders"
| subscription as my son uses it, and I did originally use
| it to scratch the Civilization itch. At least until 2k
| got greedy and removed it.
|
| But...wait...just looking and it appears that
| Civilization has joined GFN again. Apparently they saw
| GFN as a selling point for 7 so they offered it again.
| Huh.
| fragmede wrote:
| Just one more turn!
| RulerOf wrote:
| > It turns out that RDP is one of the best remoting
| technologies.
|
| I was very surprised by this too. I think it was Windows
| 8.1, when going from one machine to another, was
| basically a no-compromise experience for most gaming,
| except for FPS--the latency was always a little too high.
|
| Nowadays I can use Parsec over WiFi at 4K and almost
| can't tell the difference. Almost. And only with a
| controller.
| pier25 wrote:
| Possible, yes, but adequate?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's a lot of things that are possible and even adequate,
| but not a good idea unless you're sure that the org will not
| cheap out on Internet connection or other necessary infra.
| rcarmo wrote:
| It works _great_, actually. Depends on your RDP client
| mostly, although I don't do color grading myself.
| ajaimk wrote:
| I play computer games running on my PC on my MacBook via
| Parsec (RDP) all the time. Video editing probably is less
| intensive that gaming.
|
| Linus Tech Tips uses Parsec too since at least 2020 for their
| remote employees for video editing.
| fathermarz wrote:
| They did mention it outright by saying something along the lines
| of "remote into". I don't see this being a show stopper for the
| use case.
| megadata wrote:
| The Thin Client idea dates back to the 80s at least.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client
| beached_whale wrote:
| This is similar to how Steam Remote Play works too, it uses RDP.
| A lot of tasks work really well over remote desktop.
| Havoc wrote:
| Remote play isn't actually RDP. Similar concept but different
| protocol
| wtallis wrote:
| Is the protocol actually based on RDP, or is it merely
| achieving a similar purpose?
| rcarmo wrote:
| Well, it is similar to RDP with H.264 (and yes, you can do
| H.264 in RDP, and yes, the text has no artifacts), but not
| RDP where it regards authentication.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| I'm not convinced they were ever trying to say a Mac mini could
| create a production film on its own. This isn't how post
| production works...
| pier25 wrote:
| I'm surprised at this point Apple still doesn't have some sort of
| solution for cloud/remote editing integrated into Final Cut. What
| I mean is a native desktop GUI but with the video files streaming
| from a remote location for the previews, thubmnails, etc. Heck,
| the GUI could even be a web app.
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| Latency?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| More than remote desktop?
| pier25 wrote:
| If the GUI is running locally I don't think latency would be
| that bad given that you're not on the other side of the world
| and you have a decent connection.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| They had the beginnings of that, but they discontinued it 15
| years ago:
|
| _Final Cut Server:_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Cut_Server
|
| * https://unflyingobject.com/posts/final-cut-server (2007)
| therein wrote:
| He isn't even using Final Cut. That should tell you how good of
| a job Apple is doing with FCP.
| pier25 wrote:
| Avid is the industry standard and has been for years. Doesn't
| matter how good or bad FC is.
|
| Even DVR hasn't been able to compete even though it's
| probably the industry standard for grading.
| troupo wrote:
| > Avid is the industry standard and has been for years.
| Doesn't matter how good or bad FC is.
|
| FCP used to hold 60% of the market (by various estimates),
| and then Apple botched both the transition to FCP X _and_
| the Mac Pro at the same time.
| pier25 wrote:
| That was like... 15 years ago?
| grandempire wrote:
| But they are still using a Mac at the end? What's the point of
| this story?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| > requirements in its EULA that seem designed to protect its
| hardware business above all else
|
| To get this you have to understand Apple's business model. They
| sell style, quality, and exclusivity, and ease of use. They can't
| ensure those things if they separate the hardware from the
| software. I'm sure they would love to make money from software
| licenses without the hardware. But it would end up creating new
| problems that would dilute the value of their product.
|
| The proof is in the pudding. They're the most valuable company in
| the world because of their limitations, not despite them.
| pier25 wrote:
| Maybe the remote stuff was just to edit on set or in a hotel room
| or something?
| jedberg wrote:
| I use Keynote to make my presentations, and one time I wanted to
| build a presentation with someone else. I asked my friend who has
| worked at Apple for 20 years, "How do you guys build Keynote
| presentations together? There doesn't seem to be an easy way to
| do that?".
|
| He said, "We don't collaborate at Apple because of the
| (perceived) risk of leaks. None of our tools are built for
| collaboration". Apple is famously closed about information
| sharing, to the point where on some floors every office requires
| its own badge, and sometimes even the cabinets within.
|
| So it doesn't surprise me that their video editing tools are
| designed for a single user at a time.
|
| Edit: This happened about six years ago, they have since added
| some collaboration tools, however it's more about the attitude at
| Apple in general and why their own tools lag on collaboration.
|
| Edit 2: After the replies I thought I was going crazy. I actually
| checked my message history and found the discussion. I knew this
| happened pre-COVID, but it was actually in 2013, 12 years ago. I
| didn't think it was that long ago.
| galad87 wrote:
| That's a weird answer, Keynote can shares presentations, and
| multiple people can work on the same presentation in real-time,
| either on the macOS/iOS or the web version. The feature has
| been available for years: https://support.apple.com/en-
| us/guide/keynote/tan4e89e275c/m...
| jedberg wrote:
| > Note: Not all Keynote features are available for a shared
| presentation.
|
| That's the main issue. But also this happened about six years
| ago.
| galad87 wrote:
| The collaboration features were introduced in 2013 on the
| web version, and in 2016 on the native versions. And maybe
| check which features are actually not available before
| dismissing it.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Maybe the person who the op was talking about doesn't
| work on Keynote and ... secrecy ... they missed the memo?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Six years ago Keynote supported simultaneous editing
| through share with iCloud
| cptskippy wrote:
| > To collaborate on a shared presentation, people you share
| with need any of the following:
|
| >
|
| > A Mac with macOS 14.0 or later and Keynote 14.3 or later
|
| >
|
| > An iPhone with iOS 17.0 or later and Keynote 14.3 or later
|
| >
|
| > An iPad with iPadOS 17.0 or later and Keynote 14.3 or later
|
| Those OSes were released around June of 2023, so a little
| over a year?
| dcrazy wrote:
| The documentation always refers to the current versions of
| the software, and the latest version of iWork always
| requires being on latest or near-latest OS. Collaboration
| also requires all clients to be on the latest version of
| the software.
| mort96 wrote:
| > The feature has been available for years
|
| Exactly. It has been available for some years. While Keynote
| has been available for 22 years. Did it not strike you that
| _maybe_ the events your parent comment described happened
| _before_ those collaboration features were added?
| ghaff wrote:
| Huh. At my last company, probably less so presentation
| collaboration (in my case, less though still some if I were co-
| presenting) but shared documents with editors and so forth were
| huge. Better built-in workflows would have been nice ut it
| worked well enough with a bit of discipline, e.g. once you do a
| handoff you (mostly) don't make further changes unless you
| noting a typo or something.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Wut ?
|
| Keynote works just fine with multiple simultaneous users. I
| work at Apple (for now) and do it all the time with
| managers/EPMs etc.
| jedberg wrote:
| This was about six years ago.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Was working like that six years ago
| threeseed wrote:
| I worked at Apple over a decade ago and no idea what OP is
| talking about.
|
| There is plenty of collaboration in the company but it's
| typically constrained to the current project you're working
| on. And working in enterprise companies today it is no
| different.
| jc__denton wrote:
| I seem to recall an anecdote from a colleague that interviewed
| with one of Apple's security teams. The actual room where the
| interview took place was locked from the outside and you had to
| use a badge reader on the inside to leave. I guess they didn't
| want folks wandering if someone needed to make a restroom
| break, but I can't help but wonder about issues like, say, a
| fire...
| astrange wrote:
| Presumably it unlocks if there's a fire alarm. The security
| team aren't more powerful than the fire marshal.
| abenga wrote:
| Presumably. We wouldn't know until it's too late.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| A few times in my life I really had to get through a
| locked door and asked myself "What would Kojak do?" and
| always got through with at most three kicks.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| I just go up and over through the drop ceiling.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| One wonders how well that is tested, as well as what
| happens if a fire goes detected, or if someone's badge
| stops working, or if there are technical difficulties with
| the badge reader or its infrastructure...
|
| There are far too many things that can go wrong with such a
| setup.
| astrange wrote:
| This is a "midbrow dismissal".
|
| Yes, the fire marshal has also thought of the first thing
| you just thought of to post. They aren't stupid.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| arent most of these doors magnetic, ie the power goes
| down, all doors open
| jedberg wrote:
| It probably still opens, just sets of an alarm if you don't
| badge out.
| aschobel wrote:
| I've been working at Apple for almost 12 years. While secrecy
| is indeed paramount, once a tool is internally blessed, we
| collaborate normally using it. Keynote collaboration is
| actually pretty standard nowadays.
|
| _Opinions are my own and do not reflect those of my employer._
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Not to mention that blanket statements about Apple are
| absurd. I was a developer there for a decade, and every group
| was different.
|
| I love reading articles that purport to tell the public how
| things at Apple work. They're almost always laughably full of
| shit.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Didn't the article say some floors require keys for
| different offices and sometimes filing cabinets.
|
| That implies every floor is different which matches what
| you are saying.
|
| Most of the stories that have come out felt like they were
| the image Apple wanted to give. It started with Apple going
| after missing iphone that was left at a bar. We've heard
| those working on latest design for the next iphone were
| sequestered away from the rest of the company. I've always
| thought it was marketing spin and I'm glad we have an ex-
| apple employee confirming this. Back in the 'Lisa' days
| Apple did split and silo divisions, Apple did closely guard
| new iPhone designs with very few leaks happening but the
| rest of the mythology is more marketing.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Anything Apple gets attention. But any large organization
| does various forms of segmentation. Many of these stories
| are "true", but also bullshit.
|
| I worked for a company that did some work for the federal
| government. Boring stuff. Their compliance rules
| essentially required that we firewall the folks with
| operational access to their data from the rest of the
| company. We included the physical offices in that to avoid
| certain expenses and controls companywide.
| mattl wrote:
| Keynote and Numbers are interesting apps.
|
| Both are designed to replicate the same functionality as
| Concurrence and Quantrix (itself a clone of Lotus Improv) both
| by Lighthouse Design, who made lots of apps for NeXTSTEP and
| were purchased by Sun.
|
| Steve Jobs used Concurrence on a ThinkPad and also a Toshiba
| laptop to make presentations prior to Keynote (which I believe
| was created internally for him at first) even while back at
| Apple.
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if their attitude toward remote
| collaboration probably changed pretty significantly around 5
| years ago. But fair enough that it may not yet be a primary
| consideration in all of their software.
| jjcm wrote:
| Obviously a huge bias here (I work for Figma), but it's one of
| my favorite things about Figma Slides. The product still has a
| ways to go, but man being able to actually be collaborative and
| not feel like you're fighting against the software is a game
| changer.
|
| Video is a harder game due to the processing and data
| requirements, but I know that there are a lot of startups
| trying to make it collaborative first. I'm really excited for
| that to be the default.
| SSLy wrote:
| A lot video work can be done on proxies that any M-equipped
| device should be able to process a dozen or so without
| breaking a sweat.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Apple is not like that anymore. Well, not where it concerns
| remote tools and cloud use.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Isn't it also true that Apple have dozens of different scm /
| developer platforms scattered around the company? e.g. some
| teams use gitlab, others phabricator etc etc
| mattl wrote:
| I think so as I just saw this on their jobs website:
|
| > We are seeking an experienced Software Architect
| specialized in source control systems to join our dynamic
| team. The ideal candidate will have expertise in designing,
| implementing, and managing systems like GitHub, GitLab,
| Perforce, Bitbucket, and Artifactory.
| threeseed wrote:
| Almost certainly yes because Apple acquires a lot of
| companies.
|
| Many of which take time to be migrated into the mothership.
| js2 wrote:
| > I knew this happened pre-COVID, but it was actually in 2013.
|
| Real-time collaboration was added in Keynote 7.0 released in
| Sept 2016.
|
| https://www.macworld.com/article/228811/keynote-pages-and-nu...
| carlmr wrote:
| >Apple is famously closed about information sharing, to the
| point where on some floors every office requires its own badge,
| and sometimes even the cabinets within.
|
| The severed floor.
| eschaton wrote:
| "Severance" is exactly how Apple's New Product Security and
| Public Relations organizations would like all employees to
| be, to an absolute T. However, the rest of the company is
| much more pragmatic and understands well the value of
| collaboration and employees having enriched lives that they
| share with the workplace, since that leads to greater
| innovation and works well as a recruiting tool as well.
| eschaton wrote:
| They were BSing you or working in a different part of the
| company than SWE.
|
| Back in the day Keynote files would just be passed around via a
| shared server so you and the people you were collaborating with
| could make and merge changes between them, eg I'd do one part
| of a presentation, Rick would do another part, and we'd copy
| our slides out of and paste them into each others' decks to get
| a complete version for rehearsing with. If we had notes for
| each other, we'd give each other the notes out of hand rather
| than just directly change each others' slides.
|
| There's a lot of mythology that people just make up about how
| secrecy works at Apple. It's mostly sensible.
| NaOH wrote:
| Actual Title: Severed Edits
|
| _>...please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait; don 't editorialize._
|
| _> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post
| your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site
| should be for curiosity._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm normally a big believer in that rule, but in this case the
| original title is absolutely terrible
| mubou wrote:
| OP used the page <title>/og:title
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Nope cloud and local processing is always gonna be 2 things and
| not one will replace the other. Cloud has been around, and if you
| look at games nobody wants to play their game thru a service like
| Stadia.
| kevinsync wrote:
| Ultimately / objectively I agree, but subjectively I'm not so
| sure -- I recently gave NVIDIA GeForce NOW a whirl (cloud
| gaming, $19.99/month (cheaper prepaid) for an 'Ultimate'
| account which instantly connects you to an RTX 4080 VM + HDR +
| max 240fps) and it just works. Super smooth, realtime gameplay
| at max graphics.
|
| I wanted to test it out given that my son was looking to
| upgrade his PC and not only are component costs through the
| roof, there's barely any inventory to be had if you were trying
| to buy exactly what you want! (thanks, resellers...)
|
| It's not a perfect setup obviously -- really only ideal for AAA
| games with cloud saves, no mods, etc (Cyberpunk 2077, that kind
| of thing), and I won't make the argument that it's ultimately
| better than local for gaming (it's not), but I _will_ say that
| in my experience, the hardware-rendered framerates are through
| the roof, it streams seamlessly at high resolution, and I could
| see envision a scenario where video editing on an appropriate
| VM should be virtually indistinguishable from local.
|
| Just food for thought!
| medos wrote:
| Couldn't the traffic be LAN? Everyone keeps mentioning 'over the
| internet' - the device they're doing the editing on could be in a
| different room in the same building over gigabit++ speeds.
| int0x29 wrote:
| There is very little good reason to have this setup if you are
| in the same building as it.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| What? On prem multi user remote desktop servers used by on
| prem users are extremely common.
| vsviridov wrote:
| Most editing software, eg DaVinci Resolve allows editing with low
| resolution proxies, and final rendering is done with the full
| size footage
| atonse wrote:
| Final Cut Pro also lets you edit with proxies............... I
| think.
| mattl wrote:
| It does, yes.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/final-cut-pro/create-
| optimiz...
|
| Which is how I'm editing stuff on an 8Gb original M1 Mac Mini
| and it just works.
| secabeen wrote:
| I've seen NICE DCV be used for this too. Amazon bought them, so
| it's free if the server end is on AWS, but they will also sell
| you licenses for your own hardware too. It's essentially 4k60
| video streaming where the video is your desktop and they use all
| the tricks they've developed for media streaming here as well.
| bluedino wrote:
| We use this for interactive GPU apps we run on clusters
| rperez333 wrote:
| I was always curious about its performance. How is the latency
| compared to alternatives like Parsec, HP Anywhere or NoMachine?
| nickdothutton wrote:
| There are a number of reasons why the industry centralises.
| Particularly in post. One of them is the fact that the shot
| footage is insured and those policies have very strict clauses
| about handling the material. Yes this applies to an all-digital
| production as it would have applied to the film era.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Insurance companies haven't yet grokked "Lots of Copies Keeps
| Stuff Safe" yet. Unless the insurance is anti-piracy insurance?
| cbozeman wrote:
| I suspect that's a big reason. Remember about a decade back
| or so when Fox had four of it's upcoming television shows
| leaked onto public and private tracker sites about six months
| before their actual premieres?
|
| Lucifer, Minority Report, Blindspot, and Carmichael were all
| leaked, and those shows were on different networks, which
| means it was likely a third-party company that was doing
| effects in post. I don't recall if it was ever sussed out
| what exactly happened and now they all got leaked, but it
| definitely made the industry a bit warier.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Spreading copies around ad-hoc isn't a backup plan.
|
| They have redundancy and backups.
|
| > Unless the insurance is anti-piracy insurance?
|
| This is a big part of it, actually. Content that leaks prior
| to launch can reduce revenues significantly. Both from lost
| viewership due to people already having seen it, and from
| negative reviews of the unfinished early edits. Many movies
| change significantly for the better from early cuts.
| a-dub wrote:
| it's pretty standard these days i think. i remember aws having
| some hyperlocal low latency POPs with graphics capabilities for
| this specific purpose.
|
| i think there have also been a handful of purpose built remote
| desktop packages that were purpose built.
| LASR wrote:
| Oh how far we've come.
|
| My home internet is a fiber gigabit 3g/3g up/down. Tucked away
| under the staircase is where my fiber ONT terminates and it is my
| server room. I have half a dozen boxes running various things. 4
| symmetric 2012 i7 mac minis running linux KVM, and hosting
| various critical services - pihole, home automation, Homekit
| Secure Video etc.
|
| Then there a giant former gaming PC with 7 HDD bays running the
| entire storage backend for a whole load of GoPro/Osmo/Insta360
| videos I capture. Rclone to Google Photos for back-up. I don't
| edit any videos. Just there to capture memories so I can at some
| point when AI tools get good enough just have it generate clips.
| Same box runs my plex server with HW transcoding.
|
| Then there is the actual gaming PC, a mini-ITX running steam
| remote play. Has power, a network cable and a fake HDMI dongle
| that emulates a monitor to trick the GPU into thinking something
| is actually plugged in.
|
| Basically everything I do with desktop PCs at home is via some
| sort of remote interface.
|
| Remote gaming is probably the most demanding of all of these.
| Low-latency HW-accelerated solutions eg: Parsec / steam-link are
| incredible technologies.
|
| I carry an AppleTV + PS5 controllers to friends' houses and play
| the latest games across the internet.
| deadbabe wrote:
| The most impressive thing here is that you physically go to
| friends houses to play games together.
| dalanmiller wrote:
| Do you have a write up on how you get this to work with Apple
| TV? What you have I consider the dream setup.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| The real question is why arent they using Final Cut Pro? And does
| the composer using Logic?
| WorldPeas wrote:
| I will post a text to a friend of mine from a day ago: "I use my
| iphone to access pwas on my server so I can use it as a computer.
| I use my computer for x forwarding so I can use my server's
| programs." I'm not the norm but isn't it telling when I don't
| want to use your hardware, I have to? I want to enjoy these
| products, but their immutability compared to prior versions is a
| thorn in my side.
| thatswhoweneed wrote:
| a super easy way to work on big video files and not worry about
| the hassle of remote desktop and the back and forth with the
| team, versioning, etc.. is lucidlink
| (https://www.lucidlink.com/). A content creation collaboration
| tools lots of studios use. The app makes accessing cloud files as
| smooth and fast on your laptop as if they were local.
| tobi_bsf wrote:
| Real work is not done on a Mac ;)
| impoppy wrote:
| Video editing is not as portable as coding, there ain't no git.
| It doesn't surprise me that they have to do that, I imagine it's
| simply speedier and comfier to connect to a desktop that already
| has the work in progress in the latest state instead of ensuring
| everything is synced on different devices one uses. I also
| imagine that beefy MBPs with M3 and upwards could handle 4K
| editing of Severance (or maybe 8K) and they'd edit on local
| machines, should it be actually more convenient than connecting
| to a remote desktop. It's a bit shameful to admit, but still
| something we have to deal with while having such crazy advances
| in technology.
| Uehreka wrote:
| When I got into projection design I tried using git to keep
| track of my VFX workspace. After typing `git init` I heard a
| sharp knock at my apartment door. I opened it to find an
| exhausted man shaking his head. He said one word, "No." and
| then walked away.
|
| Undeterred by this ominous warning, I proceeded to create the
| git repo anyway and my computer immediately exploded. I have
| since learned that this was actually the best possible outcome
| of this reckless action.
| impoppy wrote:
| All jokes aside, it's too big of a pain in the ass to have
| that stuff version controlled. Those file formats weren't
| meant to be version controlled. If there's persistent Ctrl-Z
| that's good enough and that's the only thing non technical
| people expect to have. Software should be empathetic and the
| most empathetic way to have the project available everywhere
| is either give people a remote machine they can connect to or
| somehow share the same editor state across all machines
| without any extra steps.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| In principle a good editing tool could use Git for the edit
| operations (mere kilobytes!) and use multi-resolution video
| that can be streamed and cached locally on demand.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Another story about Apple users are upset about how they
| sell/license their software.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I mean, of course. The source video files for an entire season of
| 4K TV are friggin' _huge_ , and you want different editors to be
| able to work in different locations.
|
| The article argues:
|
| > _To me, though, it highlights a huge issue with Apple's current
| professional offerings. They are built to work on a single
| machine. At least for high-end use cases, the remote workflow
| threatens to cut them out of the equation entirely..._
|
| This is hardly a "huge issue". Plenty of people work on a single
| machine. Once your project gets too big, you move more and more
| to remote and cloud. It's a spectrum, and you want a machine
| flexible enough to handle both.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Interesting, but this misses perhaps the most embarrassing part:
| They're using Avid and not FCP.
|
| I also don't buy the author's rationale for remote editing; it's
| oddly archaic: "high-end video production is quite storage-
| intensive, which is why your favorite YouTuber constantly talks
| about their editing rigs and network-attached storage. By putting
| this stuff offsite, they can put all this data on a real server."
|
| Storage is cheap now, and desktop computers are more than
| powerful enough for any video editing. Any supposed advantage of
| remote "real servers" is going to be squandered by having to send
| everything over the Internet. The primary benefit of remote
| editing (and the much-hyped "camera to cloud") is fast
| turnaround, which you need for stuff like reality TV and news.
| But a dramatic series like Severance?
|
| It is pretty baffling that Apple would create a PR vehicle that
| impugns its products like this. It would be better to say
| nothing. After Apple acquired Shake, they splashed Lord of the
| Rings, King Kong, and other major tentpoles on the Apple homepage
| at every opportunity... of course not mentioning that Weta was
| rendering those movies on hundreds of Linux servers instead of
| Macs. But at least Shake was the same product across all
| platforms, and it really was the primary effects tool on all
| those movies.
|
| "they do not mention the use of Jump Desktop, which seems like a
| missed opportunity to promote a small-scale Mac developer. C'mon
| Apple, do better.)
|
| Oh boy, this is just a minor infraction in Apple's history of
| disrespect toward developers. They do this, and worse, to major
| development partners too. I'm not going to name names, but after
| one such partner funded the acquisition of material on its own
| equipment and that material was used in a major product
| keynote... Apple not only neglected to credit or even mention
| that partner, but proceeded to show the name of a totally
| uninvolved competitor in its first slide afterward. The level of
| betrayal there was shocking.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Sorry, this take is not good.
|
| Yes, attaching many terabytes of video is cheap now.
|
| But scrubbing through that high res raw video isnt (just) size
| intensive. Its throughput intensive. Size : throughput ::
| energy density : power density. You _can_ get pretty good all
| SSD NAS but using a 40Gbps (5GBps, minus overhead) Thunderbolt
| 4 is still gonna be ok but not stellar. A _single_ desktop SSD
| can _triple_ that!
|
| I can fully see the desire to remote stream. Being able to AV1
| on the fly encode to your local editing station, or even 265,
| at reduced quality, while still having the full bit depth
| available for editing sounds divine.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Ex VFX person here.
|
| It was quite common to have remote desktop cards on high end
| machines so that you could hide them away somewhere quiet. The
| edit stations/Flame/Baselite machines all hada fucktonne of 15k
| sas drives in them, so were really noisy.
|
| You couldn't invite a director to see what you were doing, when
| all you can hear is disk/fan whine.
|
| They were quite expensive because they needed to be able to
| encode and send 2k video in decent bitdepth (ie not 420, but
| 444), and low latency. Worse still they needed to be
| calibrateable so that you could make sure that the colour you saw
| was the colour on the other end.
|
| Alas, I can't remember what they are called, thankfully, because
| they are twats to manage.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Did y'all run the remote desktop over specific networks?
| mulmen wrote:
| Why can't you just run a longer cable into a temperature/noise
| controlled room nearby?
| walrus01 wrote:
| Based on the comment of 15k spinning drives this must have
| been quite some time ago, but there's very definite reach
| length limits on DVI and displayport cables. Let's say this
| was in 2007 and the maximum state of the art was a dual link
| DVI 2560x1600 display, you can't extend that in any practical
| way beyond about 15 feet. Extending USB keyboard and mouse by
| comparison is trivial. Unless all of the desks and
| workstations were set up directly on one side of an acoustic
| barrier wall, a hard problem to solve.
| diggan wrote:
| > you can't extend that in any practical way beyond about
| 15 feet
|
| For passive cables, that makes sense. But with repeaters,
| wouldn't you be able to go further? Maybe cable repeaters
| like that are newer than I imagine.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I bought an expensive 10m (30ft) active HDMI cable for
| connecting my PC to my TV. It said it was UltraHD rated,
| but could never get it to work reliably beyond 1080p.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| You need fiber for that -- I have a pair of them (100' to
| my desk, 30' to my TV), and they've been rock-solid for 4
| years.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Good question!
|
| So there are a couple of options, depending on the hardware.
| If it kicked out HD-SDI you could just patch the display into
| the coax in the building and have done with it.
|
| But that only worked if you were in the same building _and_
| your machine kicked out HD-SDI
|
| Most machines either shat out dual-link DVI or worse, some
| custom shit. Getting a cable that can _reliably_ transport
| dual-link DVI >10 meters was difficult and expensive. Worse
| still, it had a habit of dropping back to single link, or
| some other failure mode that was everso annoying to debug.
| More over, 10 meters often isn't far enough. Especially if
| the room had a projector (so might be >5m long throw.)
|
| Now, thats the simple case. The hard case is multi-building.
| Say, you have an operator working in london, and the director
| in new york, you want to give them the highest quality
| picture possible. The only way to do that at the time was
| with one of these cards, or some nasty SDI-hardware h264
| transcoder (hugely expensive at the time)
|
| I really wish I could remember what they were called. They
| appear to have fallen out of favour.
|
| Now, you'd just use cynesync, as you're laptop can encode
| video in real time now
| (https://www.backlight.co/product/cinesync) Also, rumour has
| it that the wolverene movie was leaked because a producer got
| coked up and left an unencypted laptop on a plane, rather
| than using cynesync to show an edit to someone important.
| Alas I can't verify that.
| viraj_shah wrote:
| This is a tangent but what was your journey into VFX?
| da_chicken wrote:
| This is a pretty common problem with all true workstation level
| computer systems. It's like taking a rack from a data center
| and putting it in your office. You've got a dozen or more
| spindles and fans spinning. I've seen systems with $200,000
| worth of RAM in them, but that was back when 256 GB of RAM was
| $100k. And, yeah, they had 15k SAS drives. If you think servers
| are expensive, you've not priced workstations.
|
| Every time I've seen higher end workstations, the actual
| workstation itself was always in a separate room, and there's
| been some kind of remote KVM solution used. The workstation was
| always very noisy and generated a lot of heat. It's also
| just... a lot of money to shove under a desk where people kick
| it all afternoon.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Guys c'mon... The desk is set dressed. Nothing in the photos
| makes any sense. Last of all, Geoffrey Richman isn't doing
| editing work in Ben Stiller's apartment.
|
| > Geoffrey Richman reviews season two finale footage. In his
| at-home edit bay (not pictured), he works on iMac, which
| remotes into a separate Mac mini that runs Avid from a post-
| production facility in Manhattan's West Village.
|
| Yeah. That would be a horrible experience.
| jmull wrote:
| I've been working this way for a long time. Not video editing,
| but it's the same principle -- I want to be over here (with my
| monitor, keyboard and mouse) but the large, complex, performance-
| sensitive environment I need to use is over there.
|
| Jump is excellent, BTW.
|
| The article seems confused though. They say they are confused if
| Macs are being used to edit the show, but since the editors are
| remoting from one Mac to another it seems unambiguous.
|
| The flavor of both the local machine and remote machine makes a
| difference. The OS of the machine you're remoting to makes the
| biggest difference, but since different OS's have their own ways
| of handling input devices, the local machine's OS is significant
| too. Every combo has its quirks, but I find Mac to Mac over Jump
| to be good.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > These editors aren't working on Macs
|
| Isn't the editing software on Macs? Can't see what point is being
| made here.
| moefh wrote:
| I have absolutely no experience with video editing, so I can't
| say if it's good or not, but the point the article is making is
| very clear: Put another way, if Stiller's
| team was building this for Amazon or Netflix, would that be a
| Mac Mini on Richman's desk, or an HP or Lenovo box? Why even
| use a Mac in this editing process at all, when other companies
| offer access to better GPUs anyway? [...]
| Sure, there's an Apple logo in the top-left corner (two,
| actually), but it feels superfluous, knowing that the software
| isn't directly on the machine and it [could] just as easily be
| running on a Windows or Linux box a thousand miles away. There
| are way more efficient ways to do this, and Apple doesn't offer
| them. Instead it relies on cloud providers like MacStadium, or
| localized IT teams, to work around their convoluted rules
| around VMs.
|
| So the client is irrelevant (it's just a terminal), and a non-
| Apple server would be a better option. (Again, I have no idea
| if any of this is actually true.)
|
| The point of the article, and the full quote, is "These editors
| aren't working on Macs, per se. They're working around them".
| kittikitti wrote:
| I do this all the time and get laughed at. I try to explain the
| exact same reasons but no one pays attention. I guess I just
| needed the Big Tech gatekeepers to tell the sheep that it works.
| Among sheep, it's not about the message but the messenger.
| bitwize wrote:
| I think Apple and Microsoft are both prepping us for a future in
| which our computers are, mostly, mere terminals for their host of
| cloud services, rather than personal computing devices. This may
| be a test run/demonstration of whether and how a highly
| interactive, compute-intensive task like video editing can be
| performed under such a paradigm.
| crooked-v wrote:
| If anything Apple's gone in exactly the opposite direction,
| given how much effort they've put into having photo processing,
| Siri, etc happen locally on specialized hardware. Even stuff
| like their autocomplete is now using invisible-to-the-end-user
| LLMs running on local hardware.
| afro88 wrote:
| The linked promotional materials [0] say that they remote into a
| _mac mini_ running Avid.
|
| > he works on iMac, which remotes into a separate Mac mini that
| runs Avid
|
| So the conjecture from the article that the mac mini isn't
| powerful enough is false
|
| > In other words, little of the horsepower being used in this
| editing process is actually coming from the Mac Mini on this
| guy's desk. Instead, it's being driven by another Mac on the
| other side of a speedy internet connection
|
| And based on other comments here, this is a pretty common way to
| do things.
|
| Why the sensationalism?
|
| [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/03/how-the-mind-
| splittin...
| abalone wrote:
| _> "In other words, little of the horsepower being used in this
| editing process is actually coming from the Mac Mini on this
| guy's desk... I'm not entirely sure we were supposed to see that,
| but there it is. Oops."_
|
| Sounds like this author didn't watch the whole video. They are
| completely open about the fact that the editing team collaborated
| through remoting. At 5:20 an editor specifically says they
| "remoted into the Mac mini."
|
| The second half of the post raises an arguably good question
| about the need for fancy Macs when cloud-based workflows only
| require glorified terminals. But that too may misplaced here --
| it's entirely possible that the team members each do local
| editing work and then host their own collaboration sessions.
| derefr wrote:
| Kind of funny to me that they have to go so "thin client" with
| this.
|
| You'd think there'd be some kind of "mipmap gateway" component to
| network-aware video editors, that incrementally re-renders
| _scrub-quality_ and _preview-quality_ renders of the timeline as
| the client tells it about project changes, and then streams those
| rendered changes back down the pipe to the client, proactively,
| into a local cache -- without the client ever needing to (or even
| being allowed to!) hold the raw assets.
|
| Then the local "fat client" editing UI could be snappy at pretty
| much all times -- _except_ for just after modifying the timeline,
| when it 'd have to flush (some variable amount of) the preview
| cache. (And even then, the _controls_ would still respond; just
| the preview and timeline-thumbnails would jitter, until the
| [active part of the] re-cache finished.)
|
| Would this enable piracy? No! Who's going to want to release a
| 480p rip of a TV episode at this point? (And 480ps _is_ all you
| need, for a _functional_ live preview, when lining up ADB or
| B-roll or whatever else. Anything needing closer examination --
| VFX, say -- could be rendered and sent by the gateway "on
| demand", as stills [on play-head stop] or as short clips [on
| first play after range-selection].)
|
| (It _would_ enable leaks... but so does RDP, if you combine it
| with local video-capture software. So that 's nothing new.)
| krupan wrote:
| He's saying that Apple stuff is hard for IT people to configure,
| customize, and virtualize, but isn't Apple's whole selling point
| that you don't need to be an IT person to use their products?
| It's a different market.
|
| I think that's why a lot of tech companies now give their
| employees Apple laptops (they are easy for employees to self-
| support) but use everything but Apple in the data centers.
| yapyap wrote:
| poor editors, having to work with a magic keyboard
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