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Are there any remote desktop solutions that can be used for accessing applications that feature large animated graphics, in particular Sony Vegas Movie Studio?

I am aware of TurboVNC. However, that sends individual bitmaps, and the demos that I’ve seen where somewhat laggy. Interesting would be a remote desktop solution that transmits the desktop as a video stream.

Server / Client OS: Linux, Windows, OSX, etc. — all would be fine.

I also asked on the Gaming Anywhere forum. Perhaps their solution for games could be “abused” for productivity applications.

Interestingly OnLive, offers a desktop solution. However, the servers are on their side, and I’m not sure if those provide strong graphics. Still, it could be interesting to try out Onlive Desktop, just to see what’s possible.

feklee
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  • Try [RealVNC](http://www.realvnc.com/download/vnc/), there are quite a few fancy encoding options to play with. *Disclosure: I used to work there*. – fredley Jan 02 '14 at 11:54
  • @fredley Like other VNC solutions, RealVNC encodes each image individually. That’s extremely inefficient if there are large moving graphics. Here on Super User, there is [a discussion](http://superuser.com/questions/285250/vnc-on-windows-why-is-it-so-slow) about using VNC for video streaming: It’s just not fast enough. – feklee Jan 02 '14 at 12:23
  • Is Windows Remote desktop not fast enough for you? MSTSC – Vladimir Oselsky Jan 02 '14 at 21:11
  • @SaUce For applications with only basic graphics and texts, RDP is great. However, for video and shaded 3D graphics, it suffers from the same problem as VNC: Encoding every frame individually is extremely inefficient. – feklee Jan 02 '14 at 23:16

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New changes in RDP 8 or 8.1 (you need matching client and server for these features to work) - can't remember which - make streaming videos in a browser a lot easier. I am not sure about CAD performance, but if I remember correctly, MSTSC can now hook up directly to the GPU on the server side and have more throughput without encoding each image individually.

Source: http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/SAC-642T

cdavid
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  • Which browser are you talking about? What is MSTSC? Furthermore: What do you mean by “hook up to the GPU”? Do you mean that the server’s GPU renders frames, which get encoded into a video stream? And just out of curiosity: Would it be possible to play graphics intense games with this technology? (because, if it is, then the new RDP should be usable for the aforementioned tasks as well) – feklee Jan 03 '14 at 08:45
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    A technology featured is RemoteApp - instead of "streaming" entire desktops, you only "stream" apps to the current session and make it appear such that the app is a local app. In cases where the browser is in a remote session, I know that videos playing are encoded using different codecs (e.g.: h.264) for better quality and lower bandwidth. – cdavid Jan 03 '14 at 18:57
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    MSTSC.exe is the default RDP client shipped with Windows (a.k.a. Remote Desktop Connection). And yes, the newer version of the binaries (8 and 8.1) hook up deeper to GPU and CPU so there is better encoding and decoding on the server and client side, but minimize the amount of data going over the wire. – cdavid Jan 03 '14 at 19:01
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    As for games, that is a bit of a problem. In order for a game to be playable, you still need at least 30fps and at a resolution of 1080p, that translates into a lot of data with no encoding (30MB/s) or the server side needs to both encode the stream AND keep the game at a playable level (which is a hard task). – cdavid Jan 03 '14 at 19:07
  • *“or the server side needs to both encode the stream AND keep the game at a playable level (which is a hard task)”* Sure it’s a hard task, but can RDP do it? In other words: Can RDP encode individual frames to a video stream, in case there is sufficient CPU power? That’s what the [cloud gaming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming) providers do, and that’s what seems necessary to make applications with lots of graphics updates work. – feklee Jan 04 '14 at 11:13
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    I unfortunately can't answer that. I don't have the technical knowledge and setup of such things. Plus RDP is mainly aimed towards Enterprise, rather than gaming, so YMMV. – cdavid Jan 08 '14 at 07:27
  • Could you summarize your findings directly in the answer? Concerning enterprise vs. gaming: For certain applications (e.g. video editing, 3D modelling and rendering) requirements are similar. That’s why I’m asking about gaming. – feklee Jan 08 '14 at 07:49
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    To get best performance from 3D accelerated remote desktop ([RemoteFX](http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/16652.remotefx-vgpu-setup-and-configuration-guide-for-windows-server-2012.aspx)) you must be connecting to a compatible Hyper-V VM. I did find a article [here](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/06/remotefx/) stating that when run under a VM so the session could get full exclusive access to the virtual GPU the reviewer was able to play Crysis over the LAN, and that is with the 2008 version. Server 2012 R2 got major impovements to RemoteFX like support for DX11 – Scott Chamberlain Jan 08 '14 at 08:36
  • @ScottChamberlain Very interesting! However, [Rhino](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhino3D), my primary 3D productivity app, relies on OpenGL, and according to the article: “RemoteFX has poor support for OpenGL.” Anyhow, it looks like at the moment there is no one-size-fits-all solution. So I made my question more specific, targeting it at Vegas Movie Studio, which I sometimes use for editing video. – feklee Jan 08 '14 at 16:53
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    The article was written against the Server 2008 version of RemoteFX, The 2012 version may have better support. You can get a [180 day trial version of Server 2012 R2](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dn205286.aspx) if you want to test it out. – Scott Chamberlain Jan 08 '14 at 17:05