In Summary

With post production workflows demanding high quality tools for remote working, those mixing to picture find themselves increasingly working via the internet. We check out Source Elements’ latest creation Source-Nexus Suite to see how it performs.

Going Deeper

With post mixes to picture requiring client approvals, things were fairly straightforward for the attended sessions of old. Things start to get interesting in the remote working now seen everywhere, when video must also be transmitted in sync with high quality multichannel audio. In the 2020s, reducing video resolution or audio quality to accommodate bandwidth is increasingly not what clients expect.

Source Elements Source-Nexus Suite

Source Elements produce a number of tools for collaborative working as employed by many pro users working with remote audio, either for picture or in its own right. These include products allowing remote HD audio and video collaboration in real time, right up to remote solutions for full-blown real-time supervised video editorial, VO recording, ADR and audio mix sessions. Source-Nexus Suite is Source Elements’ latest trio of tools covering all of these areas.

In the video Paul and Luke demonstrate Source-Nexus Suite’s potential for high quality review of both HD video and audio in perfect sync, in the comfort of the client’s browser. We demonstrate how even using a browser Source-Nexus Suite’s video resolution means the client can easily see details such as track names and clips in the post mixer’s DAW. Full quality audio playback completes the client/engineer experience for remote workflows.

Above we are using the following tools from Source-Nexus Suite:

• Source-Nexus Gateway - a hub that runs in participants’ browsers allowing them to stream video and to see and hear each other.

• Source-Nexus I/O - a collection of virtual devices for multiway streaming between applications locally.

• Source-Nexus Review - DAW plugin providing comms and source/destination mixing. The mixer uses Source-Nexus Suite’s I/O drivers with Source-Nexus Review to route talkback and DAW audio into Source-Nexus Gateway. The client runs Source-Nexus Gateway in their browser which follows system I/O, in this case an audio interface for their headphones and mic.

Going With The Workflow

The often borrowed phrase “geography is history” has become all the more salient following recent world events. With the need to create virtually between geographical places of work, the rate of development for tools to stream video and audio has gone up exponentially. So too has the need to communicate in real time while doing it, aka, talking to each other.

While the distances can now often be measured across time zones instead of between rooms, engineer and client still need that window to see each other through. Also needed is two way conversation via the guidance and assurance of talkback. Source Elements Source-Nexus Suite does that, but just as importantly it pipes nice smooth, snappy video playback out to clients with HQ audio to match. That could make remote mix reviews the norm rather than a compromise.

A Word About This Article

As the Experts team considered how we could better help the community we thought that some of you are time poor and don’t have the time to read a long article or a watch a long video. In 2023 we are going to be trying out articles that have the fast takeaway right at the start and then an opportunity to go deeper if you wish. Let us know if you like this idea in the comments.