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Comment by ajaimk | Hacker News Reader

The real reason is cause we can. The technology and internet speeds have evolved to make editing video over RDP possible.

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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.

> 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

There are much better solutions for LAN game streaming. Using RDP is... curious

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.

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.

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.

Just one more turn!

> 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.

Possible, yes, but adequate?

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.

It works _great_, actually. Depends on your RDP client mostly, although I don't do color grading myself.

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.

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