Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
I'm really excited to be here today with several people who I think are really gonna bring a great conversation We're gonna be talking about streamlining and optimizing your workflows, specifically your editing workflows, using Lucid link Premiere Pro and our new Lucid link panel for Premiere Pro. There's some really great stuff that we can do with it. And it just changes the way that we work. But I'm joined today by Dave Helmley from Adobe, Adam Beason from Lucid link, And I'm really excited to be talking today to to Brian Sanford of the, creative studio in New York versus So if we can just go around quickly, Dave, can you sort of kick it off and just give me a little bit of a background?
Sure. So, I've been with Adobe, almost three decades.
Dave Leopold and I have known each other for you know, more than half my career probably and work together in various capacities. So super excited to be here today.
The strategic development team is a worldwide team that we have put in place specifically for professional video workflows to really just understand what's happening out there. AI, of course, is bringing a whole new set of questions and challenges and excitement. So we bring a lot of this information back to engineering, and that's what helps to develop the product. So we are actually, involved in product development, with sort of the customer's voice being front and center in workflows, which is, why we're here today. So great to have us. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate that.
Great. Thank you, Dave. Adam.
Thank you, Dave. My name is Adam Beason. I'm a member of the solutions engineering team here at LucidLink.
And our job is to understand and help enhance customer workflows. So I had a hand in helping to develop the panel, and I'm really excited to get to talk to you about it today.
Great. And then, Brian, I'd love to get a little background on you. But if we can actually add them, I'm gonna stop sharing for a moment. If we can just kinda see a little bit about what versus does as Brian gives an intro, because I don't know if everyone is is familiar with the amazing work coming out of verses.
Yeah. Hi, guys.
I'm Brian Sanford. I'm the director of post production at Versus. You can see some of our our work that we're super proud of right here.
Versus is a creative studio based out of New York with offices in London, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and then, an awesome group of people who work with us around the world.
We do our best to craft Awesome, work, led by creativity and design with ideas that have originality and purpose. And we work in live action, animation, and honestly everything in between.
We, a couple of years ago, deployed, Lucid Lake into our studio.
And it's, led to amazing results.
And we recently also deployed the panel for Premiere Pro, which we'll be talking about today. Which has allowed us to really increase some efficiencies and just, make our lives as editors a little bit easier.
Awesome. Thank you.
So what I'd like to do is just kind of level set before we dig right in. And given overview, if you're not familiar with lucid link, I just wanted to sort of let you know a little bit about it before we get too far. Into the discussion.
So if you've never heard of lucid link before, if you haven't used it before, Basically, our mission is to help creatives be their most creative.
We have a real time storage collaboration platform.
That leverages cloud storage, but makes it look act and feel like it's local storage. So we allow creative to access their biggest and most important files from anywhere immediately with no waiting.
So that means you don't need to download a file to use it. Nobody is replicating a file and making their own copy. So that means that not only are you saving time by not downloading, but all that replication and and new copies, that's what's preventing people from collaborating over distances.
Anytime that you need to work on your own version and then re upload, resync with the rest of the team, you're losing that ability to collaborate.
And so what we have is a single source of truth. Everyone is working from the same version of a file, the same version of a project no matter where they are in the world. And it's a single source of truth with the scale of the cloud.
The flexibility, the scale of what the cloud can do, but it's the simplicity of a local disc. It simply looks like a local drive. Like you've plugged in a USB drive.
And because it looks like a local disk to your operating system, Mac Windows, or Linux, It looks like a local disk to your applications, and even looks like a local disk to the creative end user, which is so important because anyone who's ever used a hard drive before already knows how to use Lucid link. So that means it works with all your creative, tools, and workflows and allows creatives to work the way that they are most comfortable.
So you don't need to learn a new interface. You don't need to learn new procedures. You just sit down and start working without the weight.
And so what's really exciting is that You can do this from anywhere. And so as Brian was saying, you have teams who are distributed throughout the world. Everyone can collaborate on the same project in real time, and you can leverage the globe. You can leverage that dis distributed workforce.
And so what we do is we not only provide that flexibility to work the way that creates our our most comfortable, but we reclaim time in the day for creatives. So if you're not waiting for downloads, if you're not waiting for drives to be shipped to you, think about how much faster you can get to work. We're taking every little bit of delay out of the process and not only reclaiming it, but allowing you to reallocate that to some other part of the process.
So imagine what that can do not only for your business and operations, but for your creative output.
What would creatives say if you told them you could give them an extra hour, an extra day, an extra week on a project?
That's what we're starting to do. And what's so important and what's so much fun for me, the exciting part for me is to see not just how quickly you're getting access to files, but it's all the things that you can do now that were never before possible.
And that's what we're really talking about today.
So what I'd love to do is we're gonna get a little bit of an overview from Dave Homeley about Premiere Pro and how it works with Lucive Link, then we're gonna talk to Adam about this panel.
At Adobe Max this past year, we released the new lucid link panel for Premiere Pro. And Adam will walk you through it. And really, you couldn't have anyone better to show you how it works. Adam, was on the team that helped develop it. And it's it's really something incredible.
And then we're gonna talk to Brian about the actual workflows that he is implementing at versus and what leveraging these technologies together has really afforded them and some really clever things that they're doing. So I'm gonna stop sharing.
But Dave, can you just sort of give us an overview of, how Lucid link works with Premier and, sort of what the landscape looks like right now.
It works great. Alright. Let me expand.
I think it's fair to say that, you know, and Dave, as I said, you and I have known each other for for a real long time. And I have gotten to know Adam pretty well over some of this development. We'll talk about that.
In a minute, but I think at the core of all of this is the center of the editor, you know, Brian's world and the creator Right? It's like a much of what we have to worry about today is, you know, it works amazing with with with Premier. You know, I mean, from an engineering standpoint, You know, we've, had many meetings with Luz at length, yeah, to discuss. Here's how the caching works.
Here's how, you know, premier looks at file structures and to ensure that projects go on Mac and they go on windows and they go back and forth and even having this ability to have you know, the Linux kids, as I say, you know, the Linux people come in and contribute to the VFX side of things, which I think is critically important where It's an equal playing ground where everybody has an opportunity to participate without anything going too funky, which is kinda what happens with a lot of cloud storage or just storage in general. And to the, you know, focus of the editor, it appears and I would even argue to say it appears like a thunderbolt drive or a a network attached to drive because we used to have to worry about copying all the media with us and, you know, you're trying to get out to catch the plane or the train or wherever it's going on just the pressure, or you can't leave until you know you have everything, you know, before you go home, you know, and here on the East Coast, a snowstorm.
Right? Dave, you remember the days before before you got wise and moved out west. It's just like we have to deal with all these pressure. So Lucille Bank just kind of removes a lot of that.
Obviously, we've had the COVID story and how things work together. But if we really focus on the core user and say, what is it that we're trying to solve? We're just trying to solve. I'm in the editors or the compositor, the creative seat.
What does this mean to me? It just means it works like you would expect it to work. Concentrate on your work. Your files are gonna be there.
If you're a Mac person, you're like, hey, I like to use these utilities to back up my drives because I don't trust the cloud. You know, it takes a while for people to really understand that you can trust this platform. But so copy your files local, get utilities to figure out what's coming and going, and where are the change list. There isn't anything special you have to do except Here's the drive, it understands the path, and it just works as a as I've said many times.
Well, now that we've been doing this for a year, And I think of people, you know, I've gotten to know Brian a little bit as we've been talking about, work working together on this panel. It's, you know, you know, I sort of look at these types of teams and say, you know, we have this thing we've discussed in the past, which I always call, you know, follow the sun editing. Which means, you know, we've got something happening. Maybe it's a camera to cloud thing or somehow footage gets over to lucid link and it's like you.
And you get up and London first thing in the morning with that shoot was happening somewhere in the world. The first person at nine o'clock in the morning to see that or have access and see that media is maybe someone in London. So they have a job to do. And Brian can count on that person because that's the best person to adjust audio or to do this thing, and he can assemble a worldwide team based on talent.
And it also brings us you take someone like maybe in Brazil or, you know, maybe someone in in India and these other, you know, other places which are all they are videos created very differently, certainly in Singapore.
Those editors are gonna have a different view about how media is created. You can now have a worldwide community looking at the same media and making those little adjustments that are critical for their region and their compliance and all these things. So it is truly unique, I think, the way that Lucid link, it just works. So, therefore, that pressure is gone.
And we can just concentrate to say, hey, Adam, in your part of the world, will this edit work? And you're like, you know, not really because of this, this, and this. And it's like, okay. Well, then that person could have given and adjust that.
So I look at this as it's an amazing time to be a creator. Anyone that's going to school for this now, it's almost not fair because you've just given this amazing tool to where you can then communicate and really have an amazing all inclusive creative environment where people can just create what they need to. And then in in terms of the panel, and we'll leave some some room for that, I think the the thing to start the conversation with is this came up with an idea from a colleague of mine that's now at Lucid Lake, Dennis, who, runs some of their sales and he and I were talking about this panel going, we should really figure out what would this look like performance wise to an editor you know, you know, am I gonna have a good experience today with my internet or with whatever else is going on?
So we started talking about what this would look like. And we pull in amazing people like Adam, and we're just having this collaborative discussion.
Well, then they just took it from my request to sort of say, let's try to help guide them on how their editing is gonna go today to start talking about all these other features, which Adam will get into that really put the editor back in the center of the action, which is what I think Brian would appreciate as well, which is like my editors can just concentrate on edit If there's auto pinning and other things that happen as it analyzes sequences to make it really work well, which you'll see today, This is where I think Lucid links, you know, working with Adobe and understanding editors. And
also, I think, you know, David, it's fair to say, Lucid link hires the right people that come from this world, right, that work with your engineering the same way I work with my engineering to say, well, that's great, but an editor's gonna look at it this way. Let's or a compositor because I don't think everything's about editing. We need to be able to to kinda put them in the seat. And then, you know, Adam, you, you know, you guys just really just delivered on additional expectations and clearly at various events, you were talking to customers to say, what do you think of this?
And there's another guy Alex Farris on your team, which I think is amazing. These guys all took a lot of this info. You guys went back to the drawing board before it went public. And you were saying, you know what?
We're gonna add this feature or that feature. So, that's, you know, that's kind of, you know, been my involvement in history and excitement watching this unfold and also looking forward to hearing how Brian and team are using it. So back to you, David.
Yeah. Thank you for that. And I couldn't agree more. I think this has been a really, exciting collaboration to sort of see how this panel has developed.
And one of the things that I found so fascinating was when I actually had a chance to talk to Brian a little bit. Two, I started learning about all the ways that they saw that the panel could be used because I think we try to sort of predict how people are gonna use it, but no two people are gonna use any tool the exact same way anyway. And so I think with, Adam's team, they really tried to design something that was gonna be, as as useful as possible as invisible as possible too. You know, we we try to make sure that, Lucid link is invisible in the process that technology is not getting in the way of any workflows.
And so it was how How can the panel function as something that accelerates the process and just makes everything easier and more natural, more organic And I think they did an amazing job, but then we see once it gets into the user's hands, it takes on a life of its own. And that's that's really what I'm I'm so excited to be sharing today. So, without further ado, Adam, can you show the panel, but also talk just a little bit about how lucid link works and how the magic is created so that we can understand what the panel is doing.
I'd love to. Thank you, Dave. So I'm gonna share my screen here. This is the loose of link panel.
So As Dave said, we oops. Sorry.
Lost it for a second there.
We and the solutions engineering team work really hard to understand and try to, you know, enhance and facilitate customer workflows.
So you know, lucid link out of the box. It's designed to be, transparent. It's supposed to be a a seamless familiar workflow that will slot into whatever you're doing. Currently, it works with any file type, any application, any operating system.
And we're streaming data to you on demand so that you have a very spontaneous ability to go in and randomly access data, from the file space. So you can go in and pick something on demand and immediately begin to play it. Right? Without delay just as though it's coming from a local disc.
But we realize and and, as Dave said, we we try to look around corners and anticipate the challenges that users will face. And one of those challenges is, well, you know, what if I'm working with very large files that exceed the bandwidth that I have available or what if I you know, I'm in a in a situation where I don't have great internet at my disposal. Maybe I'm in a coffee shop or I'm in the field. Right?
And in those situations, we have developed the ability to pin. So you can see here that I have a couple of files pinned, and typically how I would do this is I would come in and I would right click and I would pin that file, through the finder or the Explorer. Right? And if I were in premier and I needed to do that as an editor, what I would be doing is I would be looking at my sequence and I would be saying, okay, you know, reveal and explore, reveal and project, right, going back to that file, and then saying, okay, right click, pin that media.
And you can see how that might be a slightly cumbersome process, and especially because you have so much media in your project, it may be hard to pinpoint exactly what you need to pin. And in that case, you end up saying, okay, well, I'm just gonna do a bulk pen. I'm just gonna right click I'm gonna pin absolutely everything.
And in doing so, I might be overshooting by quite a bit the amount of data that I need. Right? Cause I might only be using a small portion of that data in my sequence. So, as, as my friend, mister Hillman said, you know, very early on.
Colleagues here at the company from the day that I came in, we were saying, wouldn't it be great if we could just pen a sequence? Right? And that was sort of the inspiration for this, is that you can, you know, just go in and say, okay, I just wanna pin what I can see here. So that's what the what the panel enables you to do. You can come in with one easy click.
You can go in and pin everything that makes up the sequence. You can unpin it just as easily, or you can pin just your proxies if you're using a proxy workflow. Right?
And it it just makes things a lot more context a lot more efficient because it's only the footage that's being used in the project. Right?
So, you know, you go from this laborious process where you're clicking, you're going back. Maybe you're over, you know, over caching, caching more than you need, using up more space than you need. To a very efficient and very fast process where you can just click one button and be ready to go as soon as that's pinned. Right? And it's gonna be faster as well.
So that that really is it in a nutshell. We also, you know, have tried to make things easier from setting certain settings that we need to see, in premier, right, for for optimal use with with Lucid link. The whole philosophy with this is just how can we make it easier for users to to use premiere and use premiere with Lucive Lincoln.
Again, I'll stress that, you know, our philosophy is you should be able to stream on demand.
But there are those cases where maybe you can't. Maybe you don't have great internet or maybe you're working with large files, but that should not, mean that you need to make a compromise. This gives you the best of both worlds. You can have like local performance because by caching and by pinning, you're working off of your local SSD.
Right? But you're not giving up the ability to collaborate with others to have a single source of truth in the cloud, and to work in real time.
Right? So And I I would just add they, Adam, if you zoom in on that timeline a little bit so they can just sort of see that awesome edit that, Brian's put together, for us.
If you don't really understand everything about pinning, I think the easiest way to understand it, and especially with all this talk about caching and the magic and the way that Lucid link works, just think of it as frames on demand, not video on demand. So you're just grabbing the one frame at the time that you need it and lucid link remembers that frame and says I'm gonna store that over here and just grab these little frames of these Minecraft blocks as I've often referred to them. And it just that's what that's the magic that makes it work. Hinning is another way to say, well, you know, when Brian and team are working on this edit.
They're gonna concentrate on a certain area. Maybe it's one sequence or maybe if it's a long sequence, it's a certain area. By the time you hit all the various points of that sequence, pending is just gonna do that. It's gonna say this is the most commonly used stuff.
So let me download what you need, as you need it, and I'm going to remember that. And then at the the and this is great in documentary work where you have something that's super long. And you're like, you know, I went ahead and and and worked on this yesterday. Hinning would remember any of that just in case you have some sort of issue with, you know, trying trying to get access to media.
Just maybe it's a bad day on the internet it's gonna take care of that, and it's gonna appear all as real time all the time. And it the performance is good anyway, and anybody that's usually link can tell you. We had a question, Dave Leopold on. What do I need for bandwidth and all that stuff?
And I've often said, you know, a twenty up and a twenty down, is a fair assessment for most workflows.
Again, if you're trying to deal with four k and eight k, mileage may vary, but talking ten eighty edits and proxy edits and just how do I wanna edit and you're not required to use proxies. Twenty up and twenty down is a good general rule of thumb, and I say a Starbucks edit is can happen every day of the week. I mean, it's, you know, you just go to any local Starbucks. So I just thought it might help Adam to explain that it's like that commonly used area, and and and Brian, you may chime into this too, where you're just trying to bump five frames here and there and comedic timing of course is really important as is audio timing on the show reel and things that you have to put together where it's like I gotta tighten this up a bit So, anyway, I'll, turn it back to you guys.
Yeah. To your point, like, the Starbucks editor you're talking about, like, somewhere where someone has to jump right into something and get some work done. That's where the panel has really become a, a great tool for us. By making our days easier, allowing us to collaborate better. Like for instance, in this sequence that you have up, if I were to just have opened this project for the first time, I would probably start by just pinning the sequence and start working.
And then as an editor, and you can see this is why as you've developed this, I can tell that you guys, like, have editors in mind when you built this. Right? I'll then go, and I'll say, well, what I need to do to make whatever these changes are not just gonna be in this sequence. I'm gonna have to go back to my selects, you know, our as editors, we sort of live and die by our selects. So then I'll go and I'll pin my select sequence.
Now I can quickly move through my selects. I can quickly make those changes. But then again, If my select don't quite cut it, I can then go back and pin my larger sequences, maybe, everything from a particular interview or everything from a particular scene setup, pin that, and kind of make my data, and my storage a little bit more additive. Instead of, as you mentioned, pinning the entire project, this particular project was around two and a half terabytes.
So in order for me to pin this entire sequence, you're looking at something around one hundred and fifty to two hundred gigs. And when you're working on a Starbucks edit, as you said, that type of data is critical to working quickly. And, you know, versus our studio is global, and we deal with, artists in parts of the world that don't always have gig speed Internet, and they're in more of that fifty up fifty down range. And so being able to introduce the panel to them into their workflow, has been really valuable for onboarding people onto a project and just getting their creative input quickly and just letting them just get in there and do their thing, getting elusive Lincoln's panel again, it's getting things out of our way and letting us get right to work.
So it's really helped us in that capacity.
Yeah. And I think that, you know, one one of the things to mention here is that you're not filling up your internal hard drive, you know, you get to be in control of how big your cache is. So as Brian was saying, you have two and a half terabytes of of media, you get to decide I have a hundred gigs available or two hundred gigs or five hundred gigs that I wanna use for that, and you can pin just for that. But what I think is so interesting here is I think when the panel was being designed, it was we were we were talking a lot about how you know, pin a sequence. If you're gonna be working on a sequence, you pin that sequence, and then you can go stop to Starbucks or we have a a coworker who pins media and sits in the back of a moving car using his cell phone as a hotspot and doing some edits. And you can you can do that sort of thing when everything is local.
But this isn't just about pinning a single sequence and maybe a bunch of the media that you, you know, the clips that you're gonna be using.
Edit, you you all know that when editors work, you make multiple sequences, and then you grab from those sequences, and you revise those sequences. And so this is really about not just pinning a master sequence but pinning source sequences as well. And that was that was what Brian really brought to this conversation that I hadn't seen a lot of people doing before that I think is so interesting. And when you have such a a big team doing diverse things on the same project, it really opens up that possibility to allow everyone to work as efficiently as possible on their targeted section of of a, project.
Actually, Adam, Adam, can we can we show the, unbound reel Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah. So, we recently released the first episode of a v video series that Lucy Link is doing. And it was part we partnered with verses.
And we wanted to show how a creative studio is using Lucid link to accomplish just incredible things push their creativity beyond limits and really work in an unbound, unfettered environment, and get the most out of that creative time, that creative talent. And so here is our video done by Verces.
Sorry. One bear with me one second. I forgot to turn on the sound.
Started versus ten years ago. We had this idealistic mission to redefine what a state of production studio could be. We were versus the traditional way of doing things.
So what's it like running a studio like versus?
Loosid link presents?
Unbound. A series exploring how creatives use lucid link to create their password. And look creatively unbound.
A lot of people think working in the creative and production industry is like.
Big, the logo, bigger.
When in reality, it's more like Highly competitive, high stakes, real dead insane pressure.
And lots and lots of meetings.
Alright. Good morning team. For the lucid link on bound projects, we need get all of the elements into the cut for the final creative review. Okay.
So I'm gonna have the animation to explore final authors from after effects, and it's really Jamie's rendering this at card.
Edit team, can you bring everything into premier and cut it into the sequence? You can use the lucid link panel to pin just sequence media if your internet is being slowed today.
Done. Emailing a link to the export for creative review now.
Just on the creative team. Do you have any notes on the cut?
So let's Well, right now, we're working on thirty plus active projects, including more fully three d animated commercials, eight different edits, relive action shoes for the fourth on the way, six motion graphics projects, redesign projects, d f x work for a few spots that we're doing all around the world.
Two experiential projects, we have to pitch as one video game.
And the supposed to blink on bound project. I'll be a work done across four different offices, with teams and artists across six countries, and multiple time zones. All working together on Lucy Link.
Okay. Wait.
Can we add that take where Katherine says, literally could be anywhere in the world and still be worked together?
And let's have the Brazil team add some type into the footage.
Literally could be anywhere in the world. Perfect.
How do you talk about a product that when it's doing its job, you never need to talk about the product. It just works. Loosid link checks all the boxes from security and reliability to performance and just ease of use.
Versus has always been a studio that brings together the best talent to create work. This is always unafraid. It's always original.
Back up.
With lucid Link, the ability to collaborate and create effortlessly across hugely talented team of creatives, directors, designers, editors, animators, artists, producers, it empowers us to make some of the best work the studio I've ever done. And it gives us confidence in knowing that even better work, it's always ahead of us.
Awesome. Thank you. So it's hard to follow that. Yeah.
I think it just it really shows not just how incredible, the work is at verses, but, you know, you are you are telling your story about lucid link through that as well, and it shows what you're capable of doing when you're able to bring creatives all over the world together into a collaborative environment and, create something that normally, you would have needed a lot more time, a lot more people in the same location, and, you're you're just expanding in creative ways every day. Can you can you talk a little bit about what it was like to first incorporate lucid link and also the the panel into workflows where they're, how was that process?
Yeah. So we first, started doing work lucid link. I think a way that a lot of studios do is you, basically, you demo it. Right?
Cause you hear about it and you sort of don't believe it, because the the prospect of it working kind of changes the paradigm post production. So you demo it and you put a project on it and it works. And then you do your next project on it. And then you're doing all your projects on it.
And then you're taking the editorial department and the VFX department, and you're all working on it. So, without getting kind of two in the weeds there. And then the pan the panel comes along and adds this extra layer of, efficiency and power for the editorial department.
It, it changes the way that you communicate, changes the way that you prep jobs, it changes the way that you move from production into editorial, change the way that you look at staffing, you know, like, as an editor, you know, I kind of talk to you about, like, how I go through my steps now using the panel. As director of post production, it it changes the way that I brief other editors. So now I bring them in. I tell them until I look at a project in a certain way, go to the selects, go to latest sequence. I know how much time they probably need to make the change because I know that there are some efficiencies there. And then just as, like, a business owner, and someone who helps run the studio at large, it It also lets us tell our clients that we're leveraging the cloud that we can do things that we may not have been able to before, that we've been able to abandon old like, legacy technology that would have held us back.
We no longer use things like a sling shot or a sparrow. We, you know, we use, lucid link to get dailies from, set live. Like, you were talking about the, chasing the Sun edit state. I love that.
I'm gonna steal that completely. You know, our shoots in LA, DID is uploading dailies. Junior editor is in New York. Watching them populate on lucid link beginning the prep.
Then I know that, like, you know, I'll have in the morning I've now saved a full day. I've got another edit day before my first presentation because we leveraged lucid link. That's huge. And we have a plan for a project that I'm starting in about a week to do exactly that.
And that day is You know, Brian, I I think it would it would be cool to talk about, if I'm an experienced therapist, I was just glancing at the questions where people like, what about latency?
You know, and and what about bandwidth? And I see, you know, our friend Walter's on there who who I I've met at many shows and myrons out there. It's just a very smart people that we've worked with over the years asking some great questions. It might help the audience also to understand the first time you got into Lucid Lincoln. It's like, okay, I've got this big project that I just immediately wanna start to scrub it. Rather than, okay, well, just play something and you'll just see there is no latency on a on a, like I say, a twenty twenty connection, a minimal connection, just play the timeline But what was your experience and when you have to explain it to other editors on your team? Well, here's what you can expect.
When you load a project on on on loose a link because, obviously, it's not physically there yet because you're requesting blocks as you need it. But yet, as an editor, you're not trying to just if you're gonna lay back and just play the whole movie, actually, lose the link would be fine because it would just precash all that some designated drive somewhere, but you don't you don't have to do it that way. You're just physically working on certain sections and it and it becomes real time fairly fast. You wanna you wanna talk about the experience on that that you have to explain to people and and what it was like for you?
Yeah. And I'll kinda put it into those two buckets Right? If I know that I'm working with someone who has an excellent connection, right, because the connection doesn't matter. We can't, like, we can't pretend that you don't need a decent connection to make it work.
Right? But someone with a great connection, I don't have to really preface too much. We have an onboarding document that we sent to our artists before they start working with Lucille Bank that they never used for. Sometimes I'll have a brief conversation with them within the brief.
If for some reason they've never used it before, we'll go through best practices, and I'll often tell them to either pre pin of folders. That way, it's just populated with the data automatically. The pinning structure and loosen, I won't get too into it, but it it really makes it easy on artists to just jump into a project.
And then if it's someone who doesn't have excellent internet, it's it's more or less the same thing, but you just have to be more diligent about it. You have to say, okay. For you, where you are with the connection speed that you have, we would recommend that you do a, b, or c to be working as fast as you can at, you know, zero latency, etcetera, etcetera. In a pinch, if someone with, you know, medium internet needs to hop on and just work on a project live, that's where we leverage the panel.
Right? That's where we say, okay. You're jumping into this project. Start by screening the selects.
So what you'll wanna do is install the panel as your extension.
Pin all of your selects, screen those while you're also looking to pin this. So you kinda give your editor a to do list that, you know, all editors would do, right, is, like, you know, before you work on the cut screen, you're selects. By the time you're done screening your selects, you'll probably have your whole latest edit fully cached and ready to go. Mark your selects as you're going. Start making changes to your edit. So, you know, part of the way that editors just naturally work lend itself to, you know, moments like that where the panel becomes super powerful for users that don't have that, you know, eight hundred gigs up and down.
And you think about the times that you and your teammates and myself included have just wasted downloading stuff that may or may not be needed for today's edit. So pending is a way to kinda download what you need when you need it. It remembers it. So you only gotta do it once.
So you're it's kinda like an on demand as I need it rather than just saying, just give me all ten terabytes or one terabyte, whatever it is, just wasted time that you just so this is like as you use it, you retain it and a pinning allows you to decide as an editor what's important and what to release. Cause if you have a large enough thunderbolt drive if that's what you're using or even the USB drive, you can send the cash over there and you've got it when you need it. So I don't know. Is that the way you guys are working?
Yeah. We we recommend that our artists use external SSDs, just because it's super effective. And so for our family of you know, frequented artists. We just send them one. A lot of people just have one anyhow.
But obviously, that, that helps a lot And to your point about kind of control and management as you're pinning, you know, the newest version of the panel, also allows an an Adam correct my terminology from wrong, but essentially to say, hey, this sequence over this sequence, you know, you can basically set a hierarchy of needs So, again, you can say like, hey, I'm gonna start screening my selects, but I would like you to first be sure that you're pinning my latest cut. That's really helpful. And it just helps editors from, like, just a stress level, knowing that, like, I'm gonna have my media ready to go. This is where it's working. I can see how far along it's come. Just knowing where in the state of your downloads you are, your producer might connect with you and say, hey, long until you're gonna be done paying the media, and you can actually give them a pretty accurate answer.
So just help with communication.
Yeah. And and I think you you talking about This, you know, using external NVME drives. For example, I saw a question where they're kinda calling out OWC and other sort of partners out there. Lusted Link just says, what's the file path?
Where do you want me to send this? And you can say if you wanna send it to even, you know, a a NAS, that's local, test the speed because it, you know, it's all dependent on your speed to that NASS or to that drive, which is why I think it's great. You called out an MDME like a portable drive or something that may make sense to pin it to, because speed is everything when it's local And the nice thing about lucid Link is all local rules apply as if lucid Link was local. So you get your creative brain around the fact nothing actually changes in the way that you think.
And the other thing, Brian, I think it's important to mention is I've heard from a lot of customers support cost actually went down.
Again, don't work for Lucid link, but it is these conversations that I have with customers are just like, you know, I can really focus on this and I don't have to worry about all these sort of odd, weird login things and all that. You know, once you get it set up, it just it just kinda works.
Yeah. I mean, from an operation standpoint, Lucid link, irrespective with the panel has just been a lifesaver.
It's very user friendly. You know, I've always been the tech guy. At the editorial companies I worked at.
You know, I was always the guy in the machine room.
I was always the guy fixing the shared storage, the NAS on-site, and making sure everyone was logged in dealing with these archaic brutal user interfaces just to create a workspace or die forbid, troubleshoot the thing.
Lose a link, the onboarding process, and the learning curve is so small. It makes, life a lot easier for a company like Versus, that leverages the freelance, talent pool of the world because we don't have to, you know, kinda kill ourselves teaching anyone how to use it. It's so user friendly. It's so intuitive, and it's just not burdensome on our production department to bring on new talent.
So does that that kind of answers you're good again? Yep.
And and to that point, Brian, you know, we're we're also talking a lot about what the experience is to work with Lucid link.
But we're not talking about the experience of getting to work. So, you know, we're we're talking about once once you're sitting in edit, What do you do with all the media? How do you, lay out your sequences? What are you pinning?
But the amazing thing is when you onboard someone, If it's, you know, an another team member, maybe you just need an extra set of hands for a weekend, last someone last minute filling in, provisioning, giving permission to these files, these folders is as simple as clicking a button. And as soon as you click that button, everything is revealed to them. It's almost like sending you can send terabytes faster than you can send a text message. It's just there.
The amazing thing to me was that when I realized that someone can be hired and start a project within the same minute It's that fast. So so people just get to work. And, also, that means that if somebody's sick, or you need, you need to check something on a project that you're not working on.
You can simply open it up if you have permission.
And, it's right there. And because it's a single source of truth, all the file paths are consistent. There's no relinking. Whether you're on Mac, Windows, or Linux, everything just works.
It opens. It links to the right files. You're not spending an hour to finding the right files, new locations. Where is this file that one?
You know, and I love that you mentioned, like, just opening it up. Right? So as director of post production, I review every edit that goes out of Verces every day. And prior to, working with Lucid link and leveraging the cloud, that meant that an editor had to render their sequence post it to, you know, frame, and then I would review it and make notes.
Now it's much more collaborative. So we'll have a junior editor put a cut together we'll just connect at five o'clock. And I'll say, let's hop on a quick call. I'll open the project, immediately go to the latest sequence, start playing it back, and not only giving notes, but sometimes making changes, just like like that on the fly. So it it makes the work better.
It helps with, mentorship because you're showing a younger, editor the how you're making your choices and why, And it's, like, just a time saver because we're not wasting time rendering and etcetera, etcetera.
That's great.
We've gotten a lot of questions, and I'd love to start digging into some of these.
We've we've addressed a little bit the the side of bandwidth.
Ultimately, it's still gonna be a math problem. You know, does does the, bit rate that you're trying to playback and how many streams of it does that fit through the pipe that you have.
You know, as I say, we we can't break physics, but we do like to taunt it. So, if if you're able to pin, that really mitigates a lot of those bandwidth issues.
And we should also mention, by the way, pinning isn't everything everyone. It's a very it is those are for comp I would say complex edits, some long form You can always do it without pinning. Again, this ability to remember, you know, session by session, what I did yesterday and and, you know, it's almost like on demand downloading as we say, you know, grab grab those blocks of those frames when you need them.
And it's it's a nice to have. But don't feel like that is that is the workflow. There's lots of people using boosted link, without pinning, but I do think to Brian's you know, discovery. It's like, well, once you discover it, you understand how it works?
You're like, you know what? I'm always gonna pin. So that's that's tow totally up to you. And I did see some questions on on codex and proxy formats, Dave, where, you know, Lucent link is at the block level to sort of keep it simple at the data level.
It doesn't care. It doesn't know. You know, it's a data block to loosen link. But for best practices in premier and probably other editors out there, pro res is a really good choice as a proxy.
So feel comfortable in using pro res l t and pro res proxy. And Brian, that might have been directed to you. Do you have a favorite proxy format that you find works well? Some people obviously use MP four.
Or some sort of MOV and an MP four wrapper or MOV? Yeah.
We generally use pro res l t when we have control of it. But to your point, We never have control of our projects, you know, like, in all the different formats we're gonna be getting. Who knows what's gonna come our way? And yes, we're gonna proxy yes, how we're gonna work like this. But the marriage, you know, the Swiss army knife that is premier and cloud storage, when they come together, you can just get everything you need and get it together. Also, versus is a dynamic studio. There's a lot of tools in our toolbox and a lot of artists that use a lot of different tools to create the awesome work that they make, design, visual effects, animation, beyond.
And lose it link does not prioritize. Doesn't have a favorite piece of software. It's all it's all zero in once. And We all talk together and we all work together collaboratively and seamlessly.
And it's, you know, it's not so worried about formats you get to make that choice when you can as the editor, as the post production director, as the producer, whoever's creating that post pipeline based on your project, you get to work with what you want to work with.
And to the art it's actually surreal too.
Right? Right? Yeah. Like, you've just landed in Spain. Because you got called and said, I just need you there by tomorrow, and it's time to back anything up.
You know you can get to those files. You can start editing them if you have a decent connection. By the way, I did mention something just because this got me. And Adam, you might smile at this.
Hotels will block you or or or or or we'll throttle you down in many cases as soon as you start having a certain amount of data that is passed into your room They're like, you know what? We're gonna put you in a time out. So keep in mind that hotels are watching these data streams. And by the way, just updating creative cloud or some other app that you have, on your including your phone, by the way, they put you in a in a penalty box for too many download.
So if you're going to a hotel and you're testing out boosted link and you're like, this isn't working the way I would have expected to, that could be your issue. So I'll always make sure you're testing it. On a known connection. But I don't know if you had that happen, Brian, but, you know, I I I was traveling last year, and I was like, what is going on here?
And then I actually talked to the hotel IT group about it. They're like, oh, yeah. We totally will put you in a time out box.
I'm sure it's come up, but, you know, that's where pinning will save the day. Yes.
Yeah.
Exactly. And by the way, anything on audio, we had Dan ask a question about MXF and audio. And I'm like, that's back to the block level. You know, Mxf mono channels, you know, six channels, eight channels, you know, blocks or blocks. Right?
And and to Dave's point earlier, because you are actually getting the data to sit locally for you when you are playing it back and interacting with it, it works with all of your peripherals.
So you're not If you if you're doing finishing, you're doing color, everything is pixel perfect. It works with your broadcast monitor. You're not streaming a compressed video signal. You can do a five one mix. Your your audio board with flying faders is gonna be responsive. Because you're actually playing out that data locally on your machine.
We had a question about, even with good bandwidth is laced is latency still an issue.
Adam, do you wanna talk about just sort of how we how we look at latency?
Yeah. Absolutely. So, in short, yes. So, latency is always a consideration.
Distance to the to the object store and getting that data back is going to impact your performance. So you can have great bandwidth and and poor latency, and you can conversely have poor bandwidth and good low latency in some cases.
So, you know, the the panel and pinning in general is one of the techniques and caching as well that we use to sort of offset that. So it's it's maybe not as big a consideration as you would initially expect.
Because we are always storing, as others have said, the stuff that you're using most frequently. So you access something once. Maybe it doesn't play down, as snappily as you'd like it to that first time. If you play it back again, it's gonna play well. Or If you know you're gonna be working with it frequently and you know you need that perfect performance the first time, you can pin if you were in a latency challenged environment.
And I think that that defines how and why, you know, the seminar came together, why the panel, you know, we've gotta put back to what we said at the beginning of the thing and and putting Brian's team and focus. It's about the editor, the compositor, the creator that just says, okay. I understand this internet. I've got this cloud thing going on.
That's convenient. However, this really bothers me. And then you guys just sort of roll your sleeves up, and we've had some great discussions over this. Because you guys really dig in and understand workflow.
Right? Adam, I mean, your team just got in there and said, okay. Well, what are the issues? How can we can we fix by the way.
Well, if we did, would this be acceptable while at the same time not asking the creator to do something unnatural, which is like, well, if you go do this or you get this utility or you do this weird thing, it's just like, no, just grab a drive connected to, and we had someone said, hey, I use a NDME on USB three.
Which for the most part usually work okay. I mean, USB three drives to, you know, MDME drives can get super hot. So keep that in mind. If you keep your coffee on it and it keeps your coffee warm, chances are the hotter it gets slower that drive gets. But for the most part, that's probably gonna gonna work fine. No unnatural acts. Things just work like you would expect your your Mac or or or PC to work.
So Yeah. And like any piece of new technology, as an editor, when you get it, you try to break Yeah.
That's great. You know, you just try to break it. And so I I would I would implore anyone who's watching and is interested just demo it and try breaking.
Good luck. And it's also pretty easy.
Hell Adam, and he'll fix it.
That that data call Adam will give you a So this is why this this this product is great.
Like, they are listening, more than you know, everyone on here who's been probably in post russians well, they are listening more than a lot of the companies you've probably with over the years.
And and they've got, you know, you know, I always say pricing plans for the starving student that might be at a, you know, a LA film school or full sale or Cover, Toronto, any of these great institutions, and and I'll I'll I'll I'll throw out one for Scott and and Maryland's own Micah. But it's like these great institution where there are students that just wanna create and wanna be, Brian, you know, when they get out there and they're gonna be working together, You know, Listed Link's got these really inexpensive plans. It just says, look, we we get this. Here's how it is.
Get everybody to chip in five bucks a month out of the group. And it's a fairly small group. You'd be surprised at what kind of performance you can do as an independent. And then there are plans to sort of kick you up into, you know, whatever security levels you need and support and data plans.
But, you know, that is truly, I think approachable no matter where you are in your creative journey, which is just like, look, this is all I can afford a month. And it really is about uniting people. And I always, you know, I'm a big believer in and a lot of the the schools and and, you know, a film schools and art schools just people come together with different backgrounds to do some amazing creative work I think, Lucid link is one of those things you could go out on fall break or spring break and just sort of say, okay, look, we have this project to do let's get it on boosted link and let's get everybody sort of working together, and we're trying to create things like team projects and productions to bring people together, to work and, obviously, frame I owe.
By the way, before I forget, I did see something on frame I owe, and I don't wanna let the cat out of the bag. But as you know, Lucid link is learning more and more about, workflows out there and what you guys want. They have been playing in the labs, I've seen some pretty cool things about when you're making some connections. I think you'll be hearing about that, later on in the year.
I I Julie when when the team is ready to talk about that, but they're fully committed to saying we understand that media can end up in one place. We need to work with it quickly. And make sure everything's in sync. So stay tuned on on that.
I'm excited to to see that this, Adam's team never stops.
So can I just say to briefly?
I I thank you, and the Adobe team for for making the tools available. To come up with these great integrations. That's a key thing.
It's a three legged stool with Brian being a very important part of that team because somebody's gotta validate sort of the nerdy things we're doing in the in in the back room. So, yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot.
You know, then validated.
Have a great talk about this guy.
You know, you guys make. So the tools that we use to have this amazing job that we somehow continue to have and have a blast doing it.
Yeah. Some people called it work. Right, Brian?
So I I I do see that we're at we're at time. A couple things that I wanted to mention quickly, The loose link panel for Premiere Pro is available for free, totally free, in the Adobe marketplace.
So you can install it from there, open it up, start using it. We'd love to hear what you think of it.
If you are new to Lucy link and you haven't had a chance to try it, as Brian said, the best way to understand it is just get your hands on it. Start playing with it. Start to try to break it. See how it can help you. Just go to lucid link dot com. You can sign up for a fourteen day free trial.
It's totally free. We give you the keys to the car. You know, no restrictions. Just try to see if it'll work for your workflows.
And you can always reach out to us. We can help you out, walk you through things. But thank you all so much for for joining us today, and thank you so much to Brian, Dave, Adam, for joining us and talking through some of these workflows. Really appreciate it.
Thanks, guys. Have a great week.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks for your time.
Discover next-level editing directly in Adobe Premiere Pro with LucidLink’s Premiere Pro panel integration. See how editors can now cache only the media they need right in Premiere Pro — changing the game for on the go creatives that can’t rely on traditional transfer and download methods.
Join Adobe, creative studio Versus and LucidLink to learn how the LucidLink Premiere Pro panel optimizes workflows and saves valuable time. We cover:
Intelligent proxy and high-resolution workflows: Customize cache settings for high-res, proxy or both, supporting an effortless offline-to-online workflow without the need for full downloads or duplicates of large files.
Optimized performance: A single, one-touch adjustment enhances Premiere Pro’s performance, ensuring a smoother editing experience.
Real-time status updates: Instantly know when content isn’t cached in your LucidLink filespace, keeping your workflow organized and efficient.
Watch the full webinar to see how LucidLink’s Premiere Pro panel can transform your editing process.
