Blog about remote media workflows comparison

Hello, a colleague made this comparison for our blog some time ago, but it should still be up to date.

Cheers

C.

ELEMENTS
human-centered media storage

Hey Christopher,

I realize that this reply to your original inquiry is quite late but perhaps it will still be helpful to you and others.

My perspective and recommendations come from having configured and implemented both Teradici and Parsec in two separate facilities.  My first experience was with implementing Teradici at the very beginning of the Covid crisis. Like every other Studio out there, we were scrambling to integrate a remote work solution for our team.  Teradici was the overwhelmingly preferred recommendation.  Working with the Director of technology, we worked feverishly to figure out the ideal setup to accommodate the demands of our Post facility editors.  To say we struggled would be an understatement.  But our perseverance finally paid off and along with the help and assistance from some other members of this group, we were able to get the Teradici solution working.  There was a significant learning curve to overcome, not only for us but for Teradici as well.  They were refreshing their product constantly as a result of the multitude of feedback they received from the industry.  The Teradici product has evolved greatly over these two and half years.  They now offer a software hosting solution for Apple Mac products.  When we started our integration, they only supported Windows.  Also, it is now completely software-based (hosting and client).  Having recently been purchased by HP, I'm not familiar with their latest offerings. 

Parsec came to my attention over a year and a half ago when I started my new position here at Mindshow Animation.  At that time, Parsec was largely known to me from my online gaming experience.  Parsec provided a user the ability to remotely log in to another person's gaming workstation allowing them to control that gaming workstation.  I had never had first-hand experience but read several articles as to how well it worked.  Mindshow was in desperate need of a remote connectivity solution for their remote artists.  My first inclination was to go with what I knew, Teradici.  But one of my vendor's engineers recommended that I take a look at Parsec.  I was very skeptical but agreed to have a conversation. Based on that conversation, I committed to an evaluation.  First off, it couldn't have been easier to configure... install the client and create the account.  The feedback from the artists was very positive!! Most reported that it was like working on their local computer.  We used artists on the East Coast, Canada, and South America (Brazil).  Additionally, feedback that we provided to Parsec was almost immediately implemented in new versions of the software to either remediate an issue or add a function.  Fast forwarding... we are still using Parsec as our remote connection solution today.  

As for pricing, Parsec is not the less expensive of the two.  In fact, I'd say they are very close with Parsec probably being a little more expensive per license.  But that's an Apples-to-Apples comparison.  If you include Leostream in your Teradici config then you'll increase your cost significantly over Parsec.  But Leostream will offer you log and reporting features that Parsec will not.  

Overall, both of these products do an outstanding job from my experience.  The Teradici product has evolved greatly since I last integrated it.  So, I may be leaving some new features out.  I'm sure someone will correct me.  

We're a consulting company that does "studio in the cloud" implementations and use all the major protocols (NICE DCV, Parsec, Teradici/HP Anyware) and have facilitated several large client bakeoffs of the protocols as well.

The top level answer is that all three are good, but if you need frames and responsiveness Parsec is better, if you just need rez and color Teradici's better, and NICE is free in AWS. 

Many larger organizations going completely remote end up using hybrid solutions with multiple protocols so that e.g. artists, asset creators, and 3d animators use Teradici and then game dev/qa, video editing uses Parsec, and other users use NICE DCV or basic VDI solutions.

Naturally there's a bunch of details based on exactly what platforms you need supported, what kind of devices you have (Wacom tablets etc).
All three can be done with a single point of network ingress now as Nice and Parsec have added proxy layers similar to Teradici's recently.

Hey Chris,

Have not used Parsec although I hear good reviews, not sure if it support Macs but i can talk about Teradici CAS  on the mac environment, not the Teradici hardware 

Pros: Big deal for Apple to allow them to do remote desktop 

        Not bandwidth intensive but good idea to apply some bandwidth reservation/ priority on the firewall traffic rules 

        Leotsream server is required for mid to large deployments 

        Latency and responsiveness is acceptable to work 

       AV Sync  feature is awesome and comes handy to sync video audio with the remote station  

Cons: Only support SRBG color profile and finishers do not like it

          the resolution adjustment from remote to client is a bit of of pain but if you keep it consistent providers better experience(find out a set of resolutions, monitors, that works)  

           As soon as you login remotely you lose the on premise interaction so you have to reboot to use the box onsite.

           All of the above features are going to be addressed in the next release according to one of their senior engineers that we meet at NAB.  

if anyone is using Parsec can you share some field epxierince, like how is the sync, responsivnces, how can we use it on the new Mac what is the bandwidth requirements for 2k monitor, does it support wacom ...          

Hi Christopher,

In our experience Parsec has performed much better from all the reviews I have from our team here. Worked with all types of internet connectivity at the users' end. We have not been able to test or do a very detailed analysis but surely when compared to Teradici (even when compared to PCoIP Ultra) it is very responsive. Also, the Parsec paid versions have got a lot of collaboration and reporting features along with 4:4:4 color setting.

The only downside with Parsec so far we feel is available for Linux.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Bhavik Sukhadia
Fractal Picture