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.

Two "Remote Desktop" tools mentioned in the article 1)Jump desktop 2)Parsec.

[1] https://www.jumpdesktop.com [2] https://parsec.app

Meta: If I had to rank software features of an NLE when I was employed as an editor, key-to-photon (or click-to-sample, etc) latency would rank #1, far outpacing all other concerns. It's fundamental to the rhythm feel of the result, and prevents fatigue.

Avid bent over backwards to optimize for that in their software. I can't imagine cloud/remote editing being a good artist tool.

Most editing software, eg DaVinci Resolve allows editing with low resolution proxies, and final rendering is done with the full size footage

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.

The Thin Client idea dates back to the 80s at least.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client

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.

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.

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.