Steinberg Nuendo - 4.0 User Manual

Networking

Cristina Bachmann, Heiko Bischoff, Marion Bröer, Sabine Pfeifer

The information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part
of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. The software described by this document is subject to a License Agreement
and may not be copied to other media except as specifically allowed in the License Agreement. No part of this publica­tion may be copied, reproduced or otherwise transmitted or recorded, for any purpose, without prior written permission
by Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.

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Release Date: September 14, 2007

© Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, 2007.

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

5 Networking

6 Introduction
6 What can I use the Networking functions for?
6 About the technology
7 Getting started - selecting a user name and basic

procedure

9 Setting up a network
11 Sharing projects
17 Joining projects
19 Working with shared projects
22 Chatting with other users on the network
22 Opening projects with network settings
22 The Network dialogs

25 Index

4

Table of Contents

Networking

Introduction

About the technology

This document describes how you can use Nuendo’s net­working technology to collaborate with other users of Nu­endo in a peer-to-peer network.

The “owner” of a project can share it with any number of
users via LAN (Local Area Network) connections and/or
WAN (Wide Area Network) connections via standard net­work protocols.

This allows several separate users to work on a project si­multaneously and coordinate their efforts, as well as ex­change ideas and suggestions.

Using Nuendo to collaborate in a network requires that:

• All users have the same version of Nuendo.

• All computers are either connected via LAN or via the Internet

through IP addresses.

What can I use the Networking functions for?

The networking technology in Nuendo allows collaboration
with, and exchange of, MIDI, video and audio data – i.e. it
is possible to exchange and edit MIDI, video and audio.
Marker and Instrument tracks are also included in a shared
project. As of this writing, it is not possible to exchange
any mixer settings.

Even though the networking technology allows for collab­oration via WAN connections over the Internet, it is prima­rily designed for use in a LAN workgroup.

If you intend to use it for collaboration over the Internet,
bear in mind that communication is considerably slower
over the Internet, and that there are also other factors
(such as security issues and firewall problems) involved
which can complicate matters (see below).

In addition to TCP/IP, the Nuendo networking technology
uses the standard network protocol UDP (User Datagram
Protocol - primarily used to broadcast messages over a
network).

Since the technology uses the standard protocols and
calls of the operating system, no special hardware or driv­ers are required to use it, aside from a working NIC card.

Nuendo uses three ports in your system for establishing
communication, broadcasting messages and transferring
data between users: UDP port 6990, TCP port 6991 and
TCP port 6992. These ports need to be open for network
communication to be possible.

Considerations for Internet use

As previously mentioned, the Nuendo networking technol­ogy is designed mainly for use in local area networks, but
it is also possible to use it over the Internet.

If you intend to use it for collaborating with other users
over the Internet however, there are a few things to keep in
mind and some system settings you may need to make:

• If a network is to be created with any users connected
via the Internet, all users need to know the respective IP
addresses of the other computers in the network, and use
these to establish the connection.

See “Setting up WAN connections” on page 9 for details about how to
use the IP address of a computer to establish network communication
with it in Nuendo.

• There may also be issues that need to be resolved re­garding firewalls and/or computers connected to the In­ternet via private subnets. If a computer is protected by a
firewall or is in a subnet, the user may need to perform the
actions described below.

If your computer is behind a firewall

In a LAN, Nuendo uses the UDP port 6990 to establish
communication with the other computers. Over the Inter­net however, Nuendo does not use this port. Instead, con­nection and communication is established and handled via
TCP/IP messages sent to the TCP ports 6991 and 6992.

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Networking

This means that the TCP ports 6991 and 6992 must be
open on all computers. Firewalls may block messages to
these ports, thus making connection impossible. Consult
the documentation for your firewall (or operating system)
for information about how to open ports – or contact your
network administrator.

If your computer is in a subnet that uses NAT

If your computer resides in a subnet that uses NAT (Net­work Address Translation), all computers in the subnet
share the same external IP address, while the individual
computers in the subnet have internal IP addresses.

In this case, you must set up a port mapping from the ex­ternal ports 6991 and 6992 to your internal ports 6991
and 6992 - i.e. the actual ports on your computer, as op­posed to the ports of the subnet.

If computers are in different NAT subnets

If you want to collaborate with users whose computers re­side in different subnets that use NAT (see above), it
might be a good solution to set up a VPN (Virtual Private
Network). A VPN allows secure communication between
networks, using the Internet for transferring data.

It is beyond the scope of this document to go into any de­tails on how to set up a VPN, but make sure that your VPN
will act as a single network and that the ports 6991, 6992
and, if possible, 6990 are open.

Getting started - selecting a user name and basic procedure

The following is a quick summary of how to use Nuendo’s
networking technology - how to enter a user name, and
the basic procedure for sharing a project with other users.
In other words, it’s a quick guide for getting down to busi­ness and sharing a project, but you will probably want and
need to read the rest of this document as well for more in­depth descriptions of procedures and functions.

When your computer meets the criteria for communicating
with other computers (see above), this is how you quickly
go about establishing network communication and share a
project with others:

1. Launch Nuendo.

2. Activate the network by opening the Network menu

and checking the “Active” item.

This establishes network communication and introduces your computer
to any computers already present in the network. Your computer now
needs to have a unique ID for identification (see below).

3. A dialog opens in which you can enter a unique user
name to identify your computer in the network.

This is the name that will be displayed in all the network dialogs to iden­tify you to the other users in a network.

Ö Each user in a network must specify a user name, or
network name, in order to be identified in the network.

You can also change the name later (see “Selecting a user name - alter-

native method” on page 8).

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Networking

4. Click “Yes” to enter your user name.

A dialog opens in which you can enter your user name.

• If you don’t enter a user name at this point, the network
will not be activated.

5. Click in the text box, type in a name of your choice and
click “OK”.

If the network has already been created, the original creator - or adminis­trator - may have already decided on user names for all participants. If so,
ask the administrator if a name already exists for you and enter that. See

“Creating a permission preset” on page 11 for more information about

selecting user names for other participants.

Ö If a name you enter is already in use for another com­puter in the network, you will be prompted to select an­other name.

6. When you have entered a user name, load or create a
project that you want to share with the other users.

7. Open the “Project Sharing and Permissions” dialog
from the Network menu and activate the “Share Project”
option.

The project is now shared and all other users have full access to it. See

“Sharing projects” on page 11 for more details about sharing projects

and what you can do in this dialog.

Now everyone can collaborate on the project, contribute
new tracks, edit existing data and commit the changes to
the other users.

The above procedure is a short and sweet summary of the
basic usage, but the Nuendo networking technology offers
far more options. For instance, you can specify which us­ers in a network should have access to a project, whether
they should have complete access or only partial access,
and much more.

On the following pages we will also describe how to join
projects shared by others, and describe in detail how you
go about working with shared projects.

Selecting a user name - alternative method

As previously stated, each user in a network needs to
specify a unique user name, or network name, in order to
be identified in the network.

If you didn’t specify a user name or if you need to change
it, proceed as follows:

1. Open either the User Manager dialog or the Shared
Projects dialog from the Network menu.

In the top left corner of both dialogs you will find the Network Name text
field.

Entering a network name in the User Manager dialog…

…and in the Shared Projects dialog.

2. Click in the text field, type in a name of your choice
and press [Return].

This is the name that will be displayed in all the network dialogs to iden­tify you to the other users in a network.

!

Note that the following user names are reserved and
can’t be used: “Guest”, “Administrator”, “Admin” and
“Anonymous”.

Once you have entered a user name and this has been es­tablished in the network, it shouldn’t be changed unless
absolutely necessary! To use an analogy, this is similar to
registering for an Internet service or discussion forum –
once you have registered under a specific name, you can’t
log in under another name, unless you create a new ac­count.

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Networking