Yes, even YouTuber's need a little help from their friends. Justine Ezarik, aka iJustine, has been creating content for YouTube for over a decade. Back then, Justine was mostly able to host, shoot, and edit all of her videos on her own. However, with over 6.4 million subscribers and nearly daily content, she recently decided to bring on some help.

About a year ago, Justine brought on camera operator and editor Tyler Carey. When he first joined, they were able to set up a LumaForge Jellyfish Tower to enable them to work from the same footage and Final Cut Pro X Libraries. A Jellyfish Tower works quite well when they are working from the same space. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, however, working from a single location has been more difficult.

To get around this hurdle, Justine, her sister Jenna, and Tyler have started using a mix of Final Cut Pro X, Frame.io and PostLab to enable them to work together remotely. Final Cut Pro X has been their editing software of choice for years. Justine even worked with the team at Ripple Training to create a Final Cut Pro X training series.

Before the pandemic, iJustine and team used Frame.io to send clients and brands cuts of videos for approval. They have now started using Frame.io to pass assets between each other during editing. Frame.io makes it easy to send dailies, b-roll, screen recordings, music, stills, and graphics between their homes.

Using the new Frame.io Transfer app, they can download entire folders of footage in one fell swoop. Frame.io Transfer allows them to download either the original files or two different resolutions of H.264 proxies that are generated by Frame.io. If they want to download just the media for a specific timeline, they can provide Frame.io Transfer an FCPXML, and it will download only the required shots.

While the team can send FCPXML through Frame.io, this isn't the best way to collaborate with Final Cut Pro X Libraries. Enter PostLab. Oliver Peters did an excellent write-up on PostLab back in December of 2019. If you don't know already, PostLab is a cloud-based tool for Final Cut Pro X Libraries. It makes sharing Final Cut Pro X Libraries between remote editors easy.

Justine and the team have taken a liking to several essential features inside PostLab. At the heart of their workflow are PostLab's Final Cut Pro X Library locking and Time-Machine style version control. PostLab makes it easy for them to keep track of who is working on what, and what changes they made over time. Justine also loves using PostLab for task management. The Tasks tool is frankly an underutilized project management feature inside PostLab.

Once Justine and the team are finished with a cut, they still use Frame.io to send cuts to clients. They have become big fans of the Frame.io Workflow Extension inside of Final Cut Pro X. Tyler likes to link the playheads between Frame.io and Final Cut Pro X. When he clicks on a comment in the Frame.io Workflow Extension, the playhead in Final Cut Pro X jumps to the same place in his Project. Linking the Frame.io and Final Cut Pro X playheads between client notes much more straightforward.

Between Final Cut Pro X, Frame.io and PostLab, Justine and her team have found a viable way to work together from their separate homes. While this pandemic isn't preferred, it is workable. Necessity is the mother of invention. With or without an epidemic, Justine is inventing all the time.