From on-prem bottlenecks to hybrid freedom: Madecraft's remote editing workflow

About Madecraft

Madecraft is a full-service production company specializing in premium educational and corporate content. From concept to delivery, Madecraft’s in-house team of editors, producers and designers crafts high-quality courses and branded media for clients around the world.

Headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, Madecraft’s post-production team works with both in-house editors and remote contractors, collaborating daily across continents and time zones. 

Background

Madecraft produces premium video learning libraries for some of the world’s leading brands. When the team explored going remote, they were looking for a better team culture and quality of life, but only if it didn’t risk slowing the team down.

Editors spent hours hunting for files, transcoding media for contractors and uploading or downloading content. Remote editors struggled with constant relinking while working from Google Drive and on-site teams were tied to a Synology SAN with no remote access.

Without a shared workspace for producers and graphics, collaboration slowed and workloads piled up.

To streamline delivery and give editors, producers and contractors the same seamless access from everywhere, Post Supervisor Ben Nitka set out to design a hybrid workflow that worked for the whole team.

The challenge: on-prem bottlenecks and cloud confusion

Before LucidLink, Madecraft’s workflow was split across multiple platforms:

• The main “video in progress” (VIP) folder lived on Synology SAN, with no remote access.

• External editors used Google Drive for remote collaboration, creating constant relinking pain.

• Remote Desktop was the only off-site access, limiting flexibility and slowing productivity.

• Producers and graphics teams couldn’t access live project files.

The team needed a faster, unified and cost-effective workflow that could handle large assets and remote collaboration, without heavy IT overhead.

The solution: a hybrid pipeline with LucidLink + Synology

Ben Nitka and Lead Engineer, Greg Pickard, designed a hybrid post-production workflow that balanced speed, accessibility and cost:

• LucidLink filespace: a shared VIP folder that behaves like a local drive and updates in real time for every user, everywhere.

• Synology SAN + OpenVPN: heavy assets remain on-site, while LucidLink manages proxies and VIP files for instant access.

• On-site render nodes: watch folders detect approved sequences, automatically trigger high-resolution renders and write results back to LucidLink for remote review.

The results: real-time hybrid workflows that just work

LucidLink transformed Madecraft’s workflows almost immediately:

• Editors and contractors collaborate in real time, without file transfers

• No more relinking nightmares — final renders sync automatically for review

• Cloud costs down, only active projects live in LucidLink

• Remote producers can monitor progress seamlessly

• A plug-and-play system that fits into existing post workflows

“This setup gave us the flexibility of a cloud pipeline without losing control of our media or budget,” says Ben. “It just works, and that’s the biggest win.”

A foundation for hybrid creative freedom

With LucidLink, Madecraft unlocked a modern hybrid editing environment, without abandoning its reliable on-prem setup.

Editors can work from anywhere as if they’re in the same suite. Producers and contractors stay in sync on one always-up-to-date workspace. And IT overhead is practically gone.

For Ben, it’s about more than efficiency, “my team wanted hybrid and remote work as a quality-of-life benefit — and I wanted to make that possible for them. LucidLink made it happen.”

Madecraft now has a hybrid workflow that’s faster, simpler and ready to scale for any project.

Ready to modernize your post-production pipeline?

Discover how LucidLink can help your team collaborate in real time, wherever creativity happens.