By Jennifer Walden
COVID hastened the postproduction industry’s adoption of remote collaboration, yet the existing remote editing and mixing tools rarely provided true satisfaction for creators, especially when dealing with long playback sessions. John “Beetle” Bailey, Chief Technical Officer/Co-Founder of Synchronicity Media, said, “We’re all victims of the technology that’s out there. We need it to work right away, and if it doesn’t, we’ll kick it to the curb in five minutes.”
Bailey is a Canadian recording engineer/ mixer/producer who engineered and mixed Alex Cuba’s 2021 Grammy-winning “Best Latin Pop Album” titled “Mendó” and is a two-time winner of the Juno Awards’ “Recording Engineer of the Year.”
Finding suitable remote work and review tools has been a struggle “because many solutions are based on old streaming technology. We haven’t had something up to our industry standards that actually works,” added Dominic Castro, Synchronicity Media’s VP of Product/Brand Ambassador. Castro is a music producer and mixer/re-recording mixer/sound editor who works on films and series and is also a Dolby Atmos mixer at DNA Immersive (a mastering studio in Los Angeles).
While editing music for “Hidden Strike,” starring Jackie Chan and John Cena, Castro met top Hollywood music mixer Gary Lux (who has earned Emmy nominations as a re-recording mixer on “The Jacksons: An American Dream” series and pre-recording mixer on the “Sinatra: 80 Years My Way” series). They needed to find a way to connect the film’s director in Nashville with the composer in Hollywood for real-time collaboration. Since they were working on music, sync was an absolute priority, yet all the available tools had latency issues.
Who better to create a technical solution than the people needing the issue solved? Lux, Castro, Bailey, music producer/engineer Arne Wilhelmsen, and tech industry executive Jan Erik Hårvei decided to remedy the nagging lag problem with a new platform they call SyncDNA.
Synchronicity Media’s SyncDNA is a remote collaboration platform that transmits sample-accurate and frame-accurate audio and video generated from a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) or Non-Linear Editing (NLE) timeline across the public internet to participants connected anywhere in the world. Since SyncDNA was created by a group of sound and music engineers, there was an exacting wish list for what it should do. They wanted true real-time remote collaboration, including the ability to record multiple tracks of high-res audio with frame and sample rate accuracy. They wanted a remote review process that felt like everyone was in the same room — seeing and hearing the content at the same time perfectly in sync all the time. They wanted the ability to freely communicate through live video conferencing. They wanted the ability to share their DAW session window while making edit and mix changes. And, they wanted to give their clients the ability to add notes to the timeline.
It was a tall order, but the pandemic lockdown “allowed five music mixers from around the world to be a captive audience for each other eight to 10 hours a day, whiteboarding and working this out from a user standpoint,” said Lux, Synchronicity Media’s Executive Chairman/Founder. “We are the users. We’re not a bunch of tech guys. We understand that there are fussy people with attitudes that don’t want to be in a session and mixers who feel like they have a gun to their head to get it done. We get it. We experience it, too, so we’re catering to that user. As professional mixers, John, Dominic, myself, and our company couldn’t make a statement to our peers saying that we’ve done this if we haven’t done it. There’s a lot on the line. We realize that we get one opportunity to make a great impression.”
Being under pressure in a session while trying to navigate a complex technical setup is exactly what SyncDNA’s creators want to avoid. Their mission is to create a platform that’s easy for everyone to use, from the mixer to the director down to the production assistants. “The less time people spend messing around with our software, the better. If it sits there and just works all day, that’s a success,” said Bailey.
Synchronicity Media is working with industry sound pros, like Emmy and MPSE Award-winning re-recording mixer/ supervising sound editor Jonathan Wales, to improve the SyncDNA platform. Wales said, “The product is really good and the team at Synchronicity Media is super responsive, taking input and feedback as it’s developing.”
Wales noted that SyncDNA solves one of the problems that has always plagued review and approval over the internet, which is long-term playback stability and sync. “With what we do — with the level of criticality that we have — reliable, repeatable sync is essential. This is the first product that truly enables us to guarantee that what the client is seeing is in sync, giving us a level of confidence that they’re receiving something that looks and feels like their movie — not only between me and one client but between me and multiple clients in the session,” said Wales.
SYNCDNA SETUP
Knowing that hardware can be limiting for many end users, SyncDNA was created as a software-only cloud-based solution that works over the internet. SyncDNA works on Mac and PC with editing software like Adobe Premiere, Avid Media Composer and Pro Tools, REAPER (from Cuckos, Inc.), and Steinberg Nuendo. “Anything that runs AAX, VST, or AU plugins will work with SyncDNA. Lately, I’ve been doing tests in DaVinci Resolve,” Bailey said.
Lux added, “You can’t please everyone, but if you’re tech agnostic, you have a good chance of being a solution for most DAWs, and to that end, a big solution for a lot of people.”
For participants, installation involves downloading and installing the SyncDNA application and launching the software. That’s pretty much it. With SyncDNA’s built-in video conferencing suite, guests can see and hear others in the session at the bottom of the application window. The top section of the window displays the content they’re reviewing, or the host’s DAW or NLE timeline.
Bailey noted, “Video conferencing is integrated with SyncDNA, running in tandem with the session. It’s in the same application window but can be expanded out to a second screen. Our video conferencing feels similar to Zoom or Google Meet, with familiar features like auto-mute. Participants can mute and unmute as needed to give notes. There’s also a ‘Priority Speaker’ button, which allows a key contributor, like the director, to mute everyone else while they’re talking.”
Wales appreciates SyncDNA’s auto-talkback function, which mutes his microphone feed when Pro Tools is playing. “Because SyncDNA is linked to Pro Tools, whenever I hit play, SyncDNA will mute my mic automatically. It’s controlling that. When you’re mixing, you don’t have time to manually manage a whole bunch of ancillary stuff. When you’re mixing, you just need to mix,” he said.
For mixers hosting a session, the process starts with installing and launching the software and making an account. Inside SyncDNA’s standalone application window, the mixer has more options and control than participants. They can create a new project and session and invite participants using the guest’s email. They can choose to run live video via a video capture device or choose a local video file to push out to guests, set their Pro Tools Session Start time and sample rate, choose what “Mode” the session is in, and more. Again, the uncluttered interface makes setup and operation easy, yet advanced controls are available.
THE MODES, EXPLAINED
There are four “Modes,” which are accessed in the SyncDNA standalone application window: Mix Mode, Screening Mode, Isolate Mode, and Live Edit Mode.
In Mix Mode, the mixer or editor is working in their DAW or NLE, hearing and seeing content as they normally do (from their timeline in their room with zero latency). Guests are hearing things slightly downstream, yet it’s high-resolution audio and video absolutely synchronized to picture. Even though Mix Mode creates a short playback delay for guests, Wales noted that “if a client asks to stop, the entire process will stop instantly for everyone as soon as the mixer hits stop regardless of any downstream latency from the process.”
In Screening Mode, everyone (including the mixer/host) is watching the picture and listening to audio entirely simultaneously. This is the best mode for real-time notes, as everyone in the session is referencing the exact same frame of picture and sound.
In Isolate Mode, the mixer or editor is making changes and not sending audio or video at that time. This is a work mode for when the mixer or editor isn’t ready to share what they’re doing. The key here is that the conference capability remains live at all times, so even though session guests aren’t seeing and hearing what the mixer is doing, everyone can still communicate with each other.
In Live Edit Mode, the mixer or editor temporarily sends a lower-resolution feed for a “rough and ready” review — a quick review to get clarification about a specific scene, section of content, etc. The audio source for this mode is from a Transmit plugin that is placed in the signal chain in the workstation (often in the same place where the mixer is sending a 2.0 channel feed to guests).
Wales mapped the Modes to a Stream Deck, so switching between modes is an easy button press. “It’s basically instant. They built an app for SoundFlow, which means the buttons you need to activate the Modes are pre-created and show up on my Stream Deck,” he said.
Mixers who prefer consoles (e.g., Euphonix System 5, SSL Duality, AMS Neve DFC, etc.) can also use SyncDNA software for remote work. Castro explained, “You would monitor the feed from the stem recorder. So, you’d select the channels that exist in Pro Tools (or your preferred DAW) on the stem recorder, and from there, send audio out to SyncDNA. So, re-renders coming back from the Dolby renderer, or fixed channel 5.1 or 7.1 re-renders, would be selected from the stem recorder and sent to participants.”
INSIDE THE WORKSTATION
Inside the DAW or NLE, SyncDNA works through a set of four plugins: Main plugin, Transmit plugin, Delay plugin, and Delay MIDI plugin.
The Main plugin, found in the Instrument category in the host DAW or NLE, is the data pipeline that connects the workstation and the standalone SyncDNA application. It resides on an extra channel not being used in the session.
The Transmit plugin is placed on an aux channel with the audio that the mixer/host wants to feed to a participant. They can have several Transmit plugins in the session to match the audio output to each participant’s audio profile. For example, they can send a live re-render at 7.1.4 to one guest, a 5.1 live re-render to another, a binaural re-render to another, and 2.0 stereo to others.
Wales said, “That’s really important, because the mixes I’m sending are mixes that I’m creating and choosing. It isn’t some crash-down the system made, so no one knows exactly what they’re hearing. If someone comments on the stereo mix, I can listen to the exact stereo mix that they’re hearing. That way I know any client comments are real notes and not a format-related problem.”
The Delay plugin is placed on the main monitoring output of the host workstation, and only works when the system is in “Screening Mode.” This allows the mixer/host to monitor sound and picture precisely in sync with every guest in the session. Since the mixer/host is monitoring through a delay, this is a review-only mode so hands-on mixing would not be feasible.
The Delay MIDI plugin lives on the stem recorder and is only used in air-gapped installations.
SECURITY DESIGN
Security is a high priority for the entertainment industry, as it is for Synchronicity Media. SyncDNA uses built-in encryption/decryption coding for added content security over the internet. All data traffic, audio/video data, and messaging is fully encrypted between all points in the SyncDNA system, including video conferencing. Additionally, all media data is shredded in SyncDNA’s proprietary format, rendering it useless to any outsider. 2FA and SSO capability is set up for customers who request it. Bailey said, “We’re adding a preference for some organizations to have a username watermark in our video window. This isn’t going to stop somebody from recording what they see on their phone, but will clearly give pause to sharing it!”
For air-gapped installs, SyncDNA is installed on a separate computer that’s connected to the public internet. The studio feeds SDI video into a Blackmagic capture box (or similar) and Dante or MADI for audio, and that output feeds the SyncDNA software on the computer. Bailey said, “No major studio is going to let you connect a box that’s connected to the public internet to their internal production network. Dominic [Castro] put a terrific amount of work into building all of the workflow and tech to do air-gapped installs, so this way it lives outside of the studio’s internal network and is completely air-gapped” [that is, has no direct connection to the internet or to any other computer that is connected to the internet, for security reasons].
For mixing consoles, air-gap requirements are met the same way by sending a duplicate set of channels from the stem recorder to an external computer that has SyncDNA installed and is connected to the internet.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON
Decimal releases are incrementally rolling out as engineering efforts continue. The current version of SyncDNA (released in November 2024) is geared toward facility-to-guest or facility-to-facility remote review, but more collaborative technology is on the horizon. “We are working very closely with Avid on their scripting software development kit (SDK) to allow for adding markers and notes in the DAW timeline in real-time during a SyncDNA session,” Bailey said.
Another pending addition is one-to-one remote recording. Castro said, “Interestingly, we started as a recording platform since that was the initial issue we were trying to solve. However, we realized that flipping around the transmission and synchronization engines by 180 degrees would be fantastic for remote playback. We decided to go that route first as demands were a bit higher for remote review during the pandemic. With that need addressed, we’re now flipping the engine back around to handle remote recording.”
This will allow users to record one musician or remote talent directly back into any host DAW with complete sample accuracy. At the same time, remote participants will be getting updates in real-time from the mixer’s DAW timeline. Castro explained, “The remote talent doesn’t need a DAW on their end. The SyncDNA software can handle all of the necessary workflow. It will pick up the microphone that the talent is using, which is connected directly to their computer’s hardware interface, and transmit that across the internet to the mixer’s DAW.”
SyncDNA is also being used for scoring and mixing an upcoming film. “All of the participants — the scoring mixer, his assistant, the music editor, the composer, and eventually the director — are getting copies of SyncDNA,” said Lux.
Bailey added, “We’ve had a fully working prototype for over two years where we can do ensemble recordings with musicians or actors , but building the back-end infrastructure, like the security and all of the scaling that makes a platform successful, has been the heavy lift in terms of development. Now we’re into the fun part of slowly taking the pieces from our prototype and adding those to the commercial releases.”
SYNCED WORKFLOW
As development on SyncDNA continues, new uses are emerging. For instance, SyncDNA is being used in broadcast for an NLE and DAW synced workflow. Castro explained, “Instead of exporting new renders of the video timeline, importing those into the DAW, conforming, and then doing a playback session, the editor can capture the video outbound from the NLE and send that directly into SyncDNA, while the audio editor captures the audio from the DAW timeline and sends that into SyncDNA, then the video and the audio departments are working in tandem while they’re sending a feed for remote review and approval. It’s a very much desired workflow.”
Bailey added, “They’re working on very tight timelines to get content to air. The NLE and DAW are locked together, so everything is available all the time. People on the review side (e.g., showrunners, directors, executives, etc.), can make decisions about video edits and audio edits. They can conform and cut material out of both timelines. It’s all happening in real time. Once producers experience the speed of this workflow, it makes it hard to go back to moving files back and forth offline.”
On the technology side of the platform, SyncDNA is continuing to expand its fully automated cloud system where everything would be synced all the time between various departments. Bailey said, “As we roll out pieces in our platform, you’ll start to see some cool capabilities coming.”
FIXED COSTS
There is a fixed cost to access the platform and a secondary cost based on how much SyncDNA cloud storage and bandwidth is being used for a given project. Lower tiers start at $199/month for a single user; the next tier is $299/month, and it progresses upwards.
Castro said, “It’s like a gas meter. You have to pay for the gas as you move through projects. But the nice part about that pricing model is that it allows companies to scale their use costs; some months they may not be using remote collaboration. We try to be flexible because we understand that projects are flexible. We don’t want to price ourselves out of the market to the point where indie films or smaller projects are unable to use our software. We believe remote technology should be available at the highest level for all users.”
FACING THE FUTURE
It’s early days for SyncDNA; the tech is improving and capabilities are expanding. Working with sound and picture pros to build a rock-solid professional tool proves they’re dedicated to making SyncDNA the industry standard for remote collaboration and hybrid collaboration — connecting showrunners and executives in one facility to mixers, editors, and talent in different, distant studios. Castro said, “This really allows for saving on travel and saving time by easily accessing a dub stage or other facilities in a matter of seconds. I see this being something that people want to use. We’re excited to train users on this way of working and showing how this will benefit them and their clients.”
Wales agreed, “The other solutions out there for remote review are not asking what we need and want for audio workflows. They give us what we get and we figure out how to adapt the solution to fit our workflow. The SyncDNA team wants to help; they listen to feedback and try to build what we need so that the actual process of accomplishing the work is as easy as possible.”
