Go Back   Cockos Incorporated Forums > REAPER Forums > REAPER Q&A, Tips, Tricks and Howto

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 07-06-2020, 07:41 AM   #1
henrys_cat
Human being with feelings
 
henrys_cat's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 27
Default Optimizations for running Reaper with remotely hosted projects

Hi All,

I've been a Reaper user for several years and absolutely love it - however in these lockdown times my usage has shifted from working in my studio to working from home, connecting to remotely hosted Reaper projects (which for security reasons need to remain remote).

This largely works pretty well, but things can be a little slow to load - especially if task switching between Reaper and other programs - there's usually a short pause before reaper becomes responsive.

Are there any ways to generally speed things up that people know when working with remotely hosted projects?

Cheers,
G
henrys_cat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-07-2020, 05:12 AM   #2
mschnell
Human being with feelings
 
mschnell's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Krefeld, Germany
Posts: 14,636
Default

How do you do the connection ?

Do you remote-control a PC that runs Reaper, or do you run Reaper on the remote files ?

Do you use a VPN as a network connection ?

-Michael
mschnell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-07-2020, 06:01 AM   #3
henrys_cat
Human being with feelings
 
henrys_cat's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 27
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell View Post
How do you do the connection ?

Do you remote-control a PC that runs Reaper, or do you run Reaper on the remote files ?

Do you use a VPN as a network connection ?

-Michael
I have tried both - but lag working over a remote desktop connection has been pretty bad for latency, plus has occasional artifacts which make working difficult.

Currently I'm using a copy of Reaper on my local computer, connecting to a remotely saved session in a network location via VPN.

I guess the ideal would be a mode in Reaper that caches a project locally in memory so that it potentially has a longer initial load time, but once loaded is more responsive - although I'm not sure of the feasibility of that.
henrys_cat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-07-2020, 10:05 AM   #4
toleolu
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 2,423
Default

Curious if when you access the remote projects, are the paths to the audio files, plugins, etc pointing to locations on your local computer, or the remote computer?

Can you download the project folder(s) to your local computer, work on them locally, then upload the updated project folder to the network location?
toleolu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-07-2020, 02:19 PM   #5
mschnell
Human being with feelings
 
mschnell's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Krefeld, Germany
Posts: 14,636
Default

I suppose there are tools that do file caching via network, but I don't know them.

A way that I know is to use Linux systems as file servers (NAS) at both ends of the vpn and use rsync to keep them in sync.

-Michael
mschnell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2020, 06:49 AM   #6
henrys_cat
Human being with feelings
 
henrys_cat's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 27
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell View Post
I suppose there are tools that do file caching via network, but I don't know them.

A way that I know is to use Linux systems as file servers (NAS) at both ends of the vpn and use rsync to keep them in sync.
Quote:
Originally Posted by toleolu View Post
Curious if when you access the remote projects, are the paths to the audio files, plugins, etc pointing to locations on your local computer, or the remote computer?

Can you download the project folder(s) to your local computer, work on them locally, then upload the updated project folder to the network location?
Project and files are both on the network rather than local, plugins are installed locally.

Downloading isn't desirable for security reasons - otherwise I would copy to the local PC for editing and then re-upload.

Sounds like there isn't anything out of the box that I'm missing here - I've tweaked Reaper to not close the audio device and keep media online when switching tasks - which definitely helps - but it's still a little laggier than running locally.
henrys_cat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2020, 08:37 AM   #7
toleolu
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 2,423
Default

Moving bits across even the fastest network is still going to be a lot slower from an actual throughput standpoint, than moving bits from a local hard drive. One thing to keep in mind about bits of data across a network is that a big chunk of those bits have nothing to do with the actual data. Lot's of communications protocol stuff in network traffic that you don't have when pulling data off a hard drive.

If, for the security reasons you cite, you're pretty much stuck with what you have, then it may just end up being something you need to be mindful of and do what you can to minimize the downside of things.

Good luck, hope you can come up with something workable.
toleolu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2020, 04:12 AM   #8
henrys_cat
Human being with feelings
 
henrys_cat's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 27
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by toleolu View Post
Moving bits across even the fastest network is still going to be a lot slower from an actual throughput standpoint, than moving bits from a local hard drive. One thing to keep in mind about bits of data across a network is that a big chunk of those bits have nothing to do with the actual data. Lot's of communications protocol stuff in network traffic that you don't have when pulling data off a hard drive.

If, for the security reasons you cite, you're pretty much stuck with what you have, then it may just end up being something you need to be mindful of and do what you can to minimize the downside of things.

Good luck, hope you can come up with something workable.
Cheers - it's totally workable as it is, but I was hoping that there might be a silver bullet for this for more extended local memory caching with Reaper that I wasn't aware of!

Many thanks,
G
henrys_cat is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 07:00 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.