[John Davidson]

Check this out Jim – you sit at your midi keyboard with the ipad on it. You can trigger record of the piano, a guitar, vo booth, etc, from the iPad. You can then delete what you recorded and record again – without having to get up or deal with a mouse across the room. It’s kind of a second screen – that’s what the MPV guys call it at least.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

WOW. It has a massive leslie/B3 Hammond plugin. Tons of settings on it!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Thanks! You know, I am so eager to learn it well and quickly that I just bought a year’s worth of MacProVideo.com’s tutorials on it. Just the Midi FX alone are tripping me out. I have to say that so far I’m pleased with this tutorial purchase.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Joseph, I actually signed up for SoShare when you first brought it up in Feb and then just sort of let it be as it was in beta. I just did a Soshare test on a 518 MB file. 13 minutes to upload and 1 minute to download. I think that might actually be much faster download speed than YSI – and free.

The only things I’d say YSI has going for it are:
-corporate branding on the received emails
-a dedicated app and built in right click/send by ysi rooted in the OS – accidentally quitting safari won’t ruin my life.
-my clients trust it
-the dedicated express app can zip files up for easier deliveries

The 3rd in the list goes away the first day a client gets something that says ‘hightail’ on it. Also, with YSI/HT focusing on cloud services, that means they’re probably taking their eye off the ball of being the perfect single file delivery option. For example – they have an Outlook plugin to send files, but nothing for Apple Mail users. I pretty much don’t expect this to change as the focus is on cloud storage now.

There are so many service options for sharing files. Lots of our clients use Box.net, others use WeTransfer, etc. I’m not really in love with any of them. I’m glad you reminded me about SS, though!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

I don’t even use the cloud stuff for YouSendIt. We use dropbox for files and little things. What this means is that I can export a QT out of FCPX that can be up to 10 GB, right click on the file, and select ‘Send by You Send It’ and it uploads the file directly to a client who gets an email from me with our company logo on it and a download link. My experience with cloud services is that they don’t really show you the progress of the file and don’t really max out the speeds of your uploads.

I have a 5MB upload speed here at home and YouSendIt tops that out, gives me a specific time till completely uploaded, and the link sent is more standalone. As a test I installed GDrive and I’m not seeing any way to send a file until it’s actually uploaded to their servers. A file I’m sending right now just seems to be uploading, but I have no idea at what speed, how long till completed, etc.

Cloud services want to store all your stuff on their servers so you’ll keep buying more and more space. I’m completely uninterested in that – I want a dedicated service for sending huge files individually. We never used the YSI/HT cloud features because cloud storage for large video files is a hassle IMHO. I can say that if I had sent the file I’m uploading right now, our 600MB file I’m still syncing to Google Drive would have been completely uploaded and ready to download by my clients in the time I’ve thought about and typed up this post (about 8 minutes).

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

The benefit of YSI/Hightail is that you upload a specific file and it goes directly to your client in a link for immediate download. The dropbox thing wants to put itself in your own dropbox first – although you can do a regular download as well. There’s less confusion and it makes for a cleaner delivery to clients who can then fwd email links to inhouse editors, etc.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

I feel like I’ve been saying it so much it hurts. The media browser is the gold hiding in the mountains of OSX. If they get it perfected, no other programs will come close to it’s power. Maybe in Mavericks it’ll really shine – especially with tags?

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Just to throw it out there, I’m obsessed with the Sony FS700. Now that it’s getting RAW and 4k, I’m in love with it even more. If you’re shooting regular HD, you just load the SD card into your iMac and it loads in without a hassle. Nice n’ easy. Check out the Metabones Speed Booster for it too. You can get full frame images into the cropped sensor AND you’ll gain a stop of aperture. Pretty nifty.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

We’re looking into defined contribution plans. Since the Covered California/exchanges thing basically gives individuals the same coverage and rates we as a company could “negotiate”, we’ll give a specific amount to employees to get their own insurance and save us the hassle and administration of something they will have to manage and administer themselves anyways.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Hah! I think it’s more of the RAW capabilities I’m going to get out of my camera and the ability to zoom after the fact – in your 1080p timeline.
The FS700 is pretty great as is, but the 4.2.0 and 8 bit limitations leave lots to be desired.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.