Editing rooms are where the magic happens. They are the kitchen where ingredients are brought together and carefully cut and mixed to create a harmonious masterpiece. However, in the aftermath of COVID, you and your AVID workstation may find yourselves much lonelier than usual.
Remote work seems like it’s here to stay, at least in some ways. Trying to collaborate with your creative team members remotely while working on a project now means that instead of live editing sessions where you cut and re-cut as you chat about the changes, you’re sending draft after draft back and forth, receiving multiple different sets of notes in your inbox in seemingly random chaos.
This has left many people wondering if they can stream their AVID Media Composer workstation directly to their creative collaborators over Zoom.
Zoom has become a nearly universal platform that many people use daily to connect with their co-workers; why not use it to create a virtual editing room?
We’ll examine some common workarounds and see if they can meet the needs of modern editing teams and stream your AVID Media Composer workspace in real-time while chatting face-to-face.
What’s The Problem With Streaming AVID Media Composer Over Zoom?
The summary of the challenges that face editors who want to stream AVID Media Composer over Zoom is that Zoom just isn’t designed to stream professional editing workspaces. The focus of its design is for basic conversations or screen-sharing web pages and documents.
Unfortunately, the benefits of AVID Media Composer being powerful enough to edit ultra-high-definition video means big problems when trying to stream it over Zoom.
Even Zoom admits to its struggles in this area:
“When a video is larger than 1080p, Zoom automatically downgrades the resolution to 1080p (or 720p) to optimize the content while minimizing the required bandwidth. Depending on how the video is shared, such as sharing a specific application or sharing only a portion of your screen, it may require additional CPU resources, which can further affect the overall quality of both the video share and the meeting for the user who is sharing.”
Zoom is a CPU-heavy program on its own. When it has to compete for resources against other CPU and graphics-heavy programs like AVID Media Composer, it attempts to adapt by downgrading quality on both ends of the stream. This can lead to things like pixilation, lag, and even dropped connections.
That being said, Zoom is so universal now that it’s natural for creative teams to attempt to work around these limits. We’ve found some common workarounds that you can try if you’re looking to stream AVID Media Composer over Zoom.
Here Are a Few Things You Can Try:
- If you have two screens, ideally two systems, and enough processing power, you can use OBS and Media Composer’s built-in NewTek NDI to stream your workplace over Zoom. AVID listened to the challenges that editors had with wanting to share their workspaces remotely and built in an NDI that can act as a video output to be streamed to platforms like Zoom.
While this workaround will allow you to stream the video feed from your Media Composer workspace, it won’t stream the entire workspace, nor will it solve Zoom’s video quality downgrade. So you may still have to deal with your co-collaborators squinting at the screen as they try to pick out the fine details in your edits.
- If you don’t feel like learning the ins and outs of connecting the built-in NDI, you can get an external webcam, point it at your AVID workspace, and stream the feed to Zoom. This will solve some of the Zoom downgrade issues, as most webcams stream in 1080p; however, the video quality of a webcam pointed at a screen is hardly the HD experience you may be looking for.
So these workarounds technically work, but do they deliver a seamless collaboration experience? Eh, not really. They’ll work for you in a pinch, but they don’t quite replicate the feeling of being in the editing room, where video quality and lag aren’t butting their way into the conversation and creative flow.
If you want a seamless experience, you’ll need a purpose-built system for creative teams and their HD workspaces. Thankfully, film and TV professionals like you designed a platform specifically for this purpose: Evercast.
Streaming AVID Media Composer with Evercast
Streaming AVID Media Composer with Evercast could not be simpler. The platform requires a simple one-time setup and requires no additional software to enjoy a seamless, real-time editing and collaboration session.
Evercast allows you to stream your workspace in full HD with ultra-low latency (less than 150ms on average). This low latency is as close to natural conversation and editing as you can get. In addition to chatting in real-time, on-screen annotation and timestamped notes allow each participant to add their two cents while keeping everything organized and frame-accurate.
And for your less tech-savvy participants, they’ll be relieved to know that they don’t have to download any additional software to participate in a meeting. Just follow the link and join from any device, anywhere in the world.
If you’re looking for a better way to bring your remote editing team closer together and collaborate more efficiently from a distance, check out Evercast. We believe collaboration is the magic behind the movies, and better collaboration starts with software that works with your team, not against it.
