MS remote desktop

[Haysus]

I have been using MS remote desktop at my day job and it works surprisingly well. I thought I remembered reading it does not play well with SAC. Is this true? It would be nice to adjust VST's that way. I tried tight vnc once and that was a total failure. Any one else have luck?

[RBIngraham]

I have been using MS remote desktop at my day job and it works surprisingly well. I thought I remembered reading it does not play well with SAC. Is this true? It would be nice to adjust VST's that way. I tried tight vnc once and that was a total failure. Any one else have luck?

Remote Desktop does indeed work well. There is one LARGE catch thought to using Win Remote Desktop and that is that is will disengage the local keyboard, monitor and mouse when you log into a computer. So you can not have both teh local KVM active and the remote KVM active at the same time. When you go back to the host machine, you will have to log back in with a user name and password and it will then log out the remote user.

The other smaller catch is that only certain versions of Windows have Remote Desktop abilities. Almost any version can be used for the remote, but only the more higher end versions of Windows allow a machine to be a host. At least I think that is right. It might be the other way around... I forgot now to be honest because I use it so rarely due to the limitation of only allowing one user at a time, it's a deal breaker for the way I work most days.

I will give Win Remote Desktop this, it is by far the fastest and most responsive of any of the options out there.

I wouldn't be surprised if it messed with the network connection between an instance of SAC Remote and the SAC host either. I've never tested running SAC Remote and Win Remote Desktop on the same laptop remote before, so you might want to test that to make sure.

I've been using Splashtop lately myself because I can sign in with either a laptop or a tablet (even my lowly little Nook works for that).

[RBIngraham]

Or actually I should add that most of the time I just use a CAT5 KVM extender, which is by far the best option. Yeah you need to run a cable and yeah the good ones can cost as much as a cheap laptop but they are by far one of the best investments I've made in all that fiddly little computer peripheral crap we have to lug around. I have two set ups and they are in constant use.

[Mattseymour]

Depending on what you're trying to do over the remote desktop, splashtop is also faster than MS RDP connections. It gives you a choice of quality or speed, so with my android tablet I can have a slightly blurry screen view (kind of like low bitrate compressed video) but less latency and more responsive, which is useful for metering and control.

[Andy Hamm]

Remote assistance would allow 2 users to be logged into the same desktop at the same time, and it is available on both the home and profesional versions of MS OS's.

Ultra VNC with the mirror driver on the host has allways worked for me though. I put a script in the quick launch toolbar to restart the VNC service in case it gets chunky, which seems to happen after a few hours. I restart it just before a show and at intermission before the act goes back on stage.

[AntonZ]

Another pitfall to avoid is that by default remote desktop also moves sound from the host to the remote machine. On the tab Local Resources when setting up an RDP connection there are three options for sound :
- bring to this machine
- do not play
- leave at remote (which in this case refers to the SAC host)

Only the last option will work. You don't want sound to be routed to the SAC remote. You don't want the host to not play audio. You only want it to be left playing at the host computer while operating it from away. And choosing the wrong option may give a loud pop before or after the SAC host being silent for a while.

Still gotta say I love RDP. We use it at work all the time, occasionally for SAC as well.

[RBIngraham]

Another pitfall to avoid is that by default remote desktop also moves sound from the host to the remote machine. On the tab Local Resources when setting up an RDP connection there are three options for sound :
- bring to this machine
- do not play
- leave at remote (which in this case refers to the SAC host)

Only the last option will work. You don't want sound to be routed to the SAC remote. You don't want the host to not play audio. You only want it to be left playing at the host computer while operating it from away. And choosing the wrong option may give a loud pop before or after the SAC host being silent for a while.

Still gotta say I love RDP. We use it at work all the time, occasionally for SAC as well.


This is another good reason I always leave the on board sound card for a computer installed and working. Then I tell windows to use that sound card for it's built in audio. This way it never touches my "pro" audio sound card. If you set it up like this, I don't think Remote Desktop will try to transfer audio that is going to the pro audio card to the remote computer. But I could be wrong about that. I usually turn off system sounds anyway.

The important thing is that I try to get windows to never touch my pro interface ever. Doesn't always work, but most days this keeps crap like the above example at bay.

[plysak]

I have been using MS remote desktop at my day job and it works surprisingly well. I thought I remembered reading it does not play well with SAC. Is this true? It would be nice to adjust VST's that way. I tried tight vnc once and that was a total failure. Any one else have luck?

Hi,
I'm using SAC via RDP as my common config. It is nice to see musicians looking on my little notebook and faders from Uli. No huge mix, no rack, no snake, sometimes realy NO cable going to FOH place.. huh?

There are just 1 real problem and easy to solve. Clicking on faders. In normal situation when you click to fader area, mouse jumps to fader position and you can adjust fader position. BUT via RDP it goes in reverse behaviour and fader jumps instantly to the mouse click position. You can imagine, what can happen and what happend to me a lot of times before Bob's help. There is a woraround for this, just switch SAC to 'Touchpad mode' and fader will ignore the mouse until you really "catch" the button, no jumping, no loudness shocks.

The "problem" with VST you mentioned is not problem, because everything is running localy, no remoted VST, no remoted plugins, just remoted sound engineer. So VST in this situation works like a charm and any VST plugin can be used.

Of course it is necessarry to tune some settings in RDP protocol, especially "Leave sound in remote computer" MUST be switched on and I suggest to switch off every sharing of resources like printers, scanners etc etc. Just go to Advanced settings of RDP session and switch almost everything off, leave sound in remote computer and you are done.

Good luck with RDP,
Michal

[Mattseymour]

That problem is solved by turning on touchscreen mode in sac.