How does remote ADR work?

By James Jones, founder of Granary Digital · September 2026

The actor is in the room. The director doesn’t have to be.

Remote ADR used to mean a phone line and a lot of trust. Now a director in a London cutting room, or in Los Angeles, can hear a take in our room near Chichester as it is performed, stop it, and run the loop again from their own timeline. This is how that works here, from the link to the files you get back.

What travels down the line

Three things: the audio in both directions, the transport, and the takes.

• The audio. Source-Connect Pro, the remote-recording software from Source Elements, carries the actor’s microphone to you and your talkback to the actor, using the Fraunhofer AAC-ELD v2 codec at up to 256 kbps per channel. You hear the session through a mix-minus, so your own voice never comes back to you late.
• The transport. Remote Transport Sync locks the two DAWs to the same timecode, sent as MTC or LTC. When one end presses play, stop or record, the other follows.
• The takes. Every pass is recorded here at full resolution. If you also record the stream at your end on Source-Connect Pro, Auto-Restore patches in any audio the line dropped once the take ends, and Auto-Replace can swap the whole take for the uncompressed original, so the file in your session never went through the codec.

What the actor sees

The scene plays on a 55-inch panel in front of the microphone, with timecode burnt in. EdiPrompt lays streamers, counters and the line itself over the picture, so the actor sees exactly when each line starts rather than guessing from the lips. Cues are logged in EdiCue, which keeps the loop list, the characters and the takes in step with your cue sheet.

Who drives

Decide this when you book, because it changes what your end needs.

• We drive. Our engineer runs the loops, records and logs each take against your cue list. You listen, give notes and approve. This suits a director who wants to concentrate on the performance.
• You drive. Your dialogue editor runs the session from their own Pro Tools or Nuendo, and our timeline follows over transport sync. Our engineer looks after the actor, the microphone and the room. Sending sync needs Source-Connect Pro at your end; Standard can only follow.

Before the day

• Picture and cues. Send the picture with burnt-in timecode and the cue list in whatever form you keep it, along with the project’s frame rate and sample rate.
• The production microphone. Tell us whether the original lines were recorded on a boom or a lav, and which microphone, so we can agree how to match it before the actor arrives. Lav lines are matched here on Sanken COS-11D lavaliers.
• The line. The session opens with a line check with your end: audio, sync and talkback. It takes a few minutes of the booked time, and the studio runs on fibre at around 500 Mbps down and 100 Mbps up.
• Paperwork. Send your NDA first, and we will sign it before any picture is sent.
• Time zones. Los Angeles is usually eight hours behind the UK and New York five, so American mornings land in our afternoon. The studio is open until 8pm on weekdays.

What you get back

48 kHz, 24-bit Broadcast WAV files, or your project’s sample rate, each timestamped to picture timecode and named by cue and take, with a take log. We record in Reaper as standard and keep a separate Pro Tools and Logic rig for post houses that want a Pro Tools session or an AAF. Or our editor conforms the chosen takes to picture and hands over one tidy delivery; see sound and post for the editing side. Files go by a private link that expires, or through your own transfer system.

Keeping unreleased picture private

We sign your NDA before picture is sent. Phones stay out of the room while unreleased picture is on the screen. Picture and takes are kept for 30 days in case of pick-ups, then deleted, unless you ask us to keep them longer.

The actor’s end of the day

The actor drives to a barn ten minutes from Chichester, parks outside, and is at the microphone a minute later. Chichester and Havant stations are ten minutes away. Portsmouth is under half an hour by road, Southampton and Worthing under an hour, and Brighton about an hour. For an actor on the South Coast that beats a day’s round trip to Soho, and for the production it can mean no travel day at all.

When remote is not the right call

The room is 4.5 metres square. That suits one actor at a time, or two playing a scene together; a crowd of voices recording group loops needs a bigger stage. And if the director would rather be in the room with the actor, London is ninety minutes away by road, with fifteen parking spaces at this end.