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[Greg Youngman]

This topic popped up on another message board.  I was so thrilled with the outcome, I thought I would "spread the word".

If you've ever wanted to remote control your DAW you probably already know that wireless keyboards/mice have a very limted range.  If you've got a laptop and wireless network cards you can use a little program called "TightVNC" and completely remote control the DAW from the laptop.  My son has been my assistant for a few years. He sets up mics, levels and punches record (actually much more than that). Pretty much my engineer. He's going away to finish college this fall and I didn't know who I could hire that would work with me and put up with my bullshit.  Remote controlling with the wireless laptop will enable me to see/check levels and do all the record/stop/play/rewind, blah blah without being in the control room.

http://www.tightvnc.com

[Lee Blaske]

You can also do the same thing more simply, more reliably, and more responsively by using a USB extender and video extension from a supplier like Gefen or Network Technologies. I've been doing this for years (and used an ADB extender before USB). I've got a keyboard and a nice flat screen monitor on a small roll-around desk. Everything is cable tied, and the monitor and keyboard are held down with sturdy velcro. The cables (including the line-out cables going to a mic pre-amp on the same cart, are neatly tied into an umbilical cord, and the umbilical cord is long enough to position the cart anywhere I'd need it in the studio. It's 100% reliable, and won't run low on power like a portable computer on batteries. It also has no fans, hard drives or CD/DVD drives to make any noise that could leak into studio mics, and it doesn't go to sleep to conserve power.

Lee Blaske

[Erik]

The hardware extender solution gets expensive for high resolution digital displays and requires multiple runs of fiber.

The remote desktop stuff isn't snappy enough for edits and the like (there's an annoying lag) but as a remote control device it works well enough.

--Erik

[RobertRandolph]

Or you can use Sawstudio, which has a complete remote control built in! Just open a second instance of the software and connect to the main machine... the second machine completely mimics (with no perceivable latency) the master machine.

Of course you can sync machines together running multiple sawsstudio's.

And a single license purchase allows for this.


Might I add tightvnc uses A LOT of resources and CPU. A better option is UltraVNC which has a tighter hook and uses far less resources. It also works much quicker over the network with smaller updates. This of course means less NIC usage, which means fewer PCI interupts, which means lower latencies in your software....