[John Davidson]

Bob, I just did a YSI test and downloaded a 50 meg file in 40 seconds. A second test on a 700 meg file I sent last week to an editor downloads for me in 11 minutes.

Something is clearly wrong on the receiver’s end. If there’s a bottleneck, I suspect it’s not with YSI or anything you can control. If the receiver has supposedly superfast internet, suggest they speak with their IT network engineer. I bet money there’s a speed cap placed on each hub on their network. This happens with Discovery and there’s nothing we can do about it.

YSI is fast man. Much faster than 40 minutes for 200 megs when you don’t have IT guys screwing with speeds.

I think I mentioned this before, but DMG Chopper will break up larger than 2 gig files and rebuild them on the other end once everything is downloaded. It’s a nice way to get around that 2 gig limit, and it’s free and easy.

[John Davidson]

That worked. For future searchers it was menu item 013 and called system frequency. Thanks!

We’d asked for 29.97. It’s a movie studio EPK and BTS, and I’m sure there’s zero chance I’ll get correct materials in time to make our cut by Wednesday. I don’t have the luxury of kicking it back, sadly.

[John Davidson]

Install qt7 from the snow leopard disk. It may be downloadadble.

[John Davidson]

Your best bet for more money is to negotiate an exit and establish yourself as a vendor for the same company.

[John Davidson]

Well, like I said, we’re talking short form media. If, when using yousendit, you find yourself going over 2gigs, all isn’t lost. I use an app call DMG chopper that breaks up a DMG into smaller chunks. When they’re all downloaded onto the other side, double click on the first one and it consolidates all the parts back into a single file. Very useful.

I will say I’ve been plenty pleased with YouSendIt. A mixer turned me onto it and at first I had some problems – if a client replied to the generated email it went to a null address. That’s fixed now, and I’ve noticed their servers are about 50% faster than mine or most networks internal FTP systems. I suspect network engineers cap server speeds, whereas YSI doesn’t.

If I were delivering via YSI and had a large stringout of spots, I’d just upload the tags in addition to the main spot. The inhouse layback editor can paste the differences onto a stringout – done.

No solution is perfect yet though. Not until bandwidth and compression hit a universally awesome sweet spot. Until then, HDcam will rock us through.

[John Davidson]

We’ve dealt with Discovery nets using YouSendIt for short form media. They still prefer tapes, but sometimes they have an emergency project that just has to be there in 2 hours. In those instances we send you a 1080i pro res quicktime straight out of FCP and it imports directly into their Avids.

I still prefer tape for now. 5 more years of exponential storage bumps and internet speeds and that may change.

When we all have 100 up/down FiOs we’ll laugh about this question. And we’ll cry about the money we spent on decks.

[John Davidson]

That depends on your definition of success.

[John Davidson]

That’s probably the best way to handle it. You could make two websites and two sets of biz cards, based on the type of client you’re trying to woo. Bigger clients might prefer the facility vibe for larger budgets, in which case you would be prepared to wow them as well.

[John Davidson]

It’s not for everybody, that’s for sure. I know lots of producers who refuse to even try to learn how to edit, even though it could double or triple their incomes. I had lunch with one this weekend and told her that, and she stared at me with a blank expression that appeared to be a combination of laziness and fear. Everybody wants to play it safe when we should all be so much riskier.

To quote a show I once worked on: “Chance favors the bold”.

[John Davidson]

I love it. We’re all being forced to get smarter, leaner and meaner. For me, the change came when we switched to Final Cut Pro. Suddenly, instead of paying $1000 per day for symphony that was SD only, we could do it all in my home office on a system that cost about 2 weeks of edit in an Avid room. Did the creative suffer? Did my spots look ‘home produced?” Nope. Our creative got better, we funneled more focus into 3D, got bigger clients, and because we weren’t being charged hourly, we could devote time to ideas that were riskier. Know what we learned? The riskier ideas got the bigger acclaim and rewards.

It’s a trend that does not bode well to unions and union shops, that’s for sure.