Digidelivery vs ?
 

I did a job which used Digidelivery to send me AAFs and QTs yesterday, my first w/that system. It was ok, but I wondered if anyone thought it was better than YOUSENDIT etc etc or a regular home-grown FTP site etc.. In other words, why bother w/ it, what's better about it?

thanks

Philip Perkins

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

It's faster and more secure.

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

almost ever large studio in LA is running them

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

Digidelivery to Digidelivery is even faster!

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

DigiDelivery is no longer controlled by Digidesign. If there is a bug with DigiDelivery, you would have to report it to the company that now owns the intellectual property that is DigiDelivery and hope they fix it.

It's faster? That's debatable in my opinion. One thing I have always noticed is the time estimate for downloading is not accurate. I did get an explanation for this, but the estimate really should be closer to what it will be.

It's more secure. Well, that is hard to argue against. If you run a secure FTP server, forcing strong passwords, using a certificate authority (verisign) to verify the server identity, etc, you can raise the security. It is true though that the security of DigiDelivery is more transparent than an FTP server.

It's a separate program. Some people are unable, or unwilling, to install software to retrieve files. Pro Tools users such as ourselves may be fine with it. If you were going to use DigiDelivery as a way of replacing an FTP server when working with clients who have no idea what Pro Tools is, I think its a hard sell. If it all worked in a web browser, it would be great. It doesn't, and that is its biggest downfall in my opinion.

An FTP server is cheaper (last I checked). Even a crusty G3, like the one I am using to type this message, with a copy of Tiger (server or not) can be used as an FTP server. DigiDelivery used to cost as much as a brand new computer, which also does so much more.

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

That is exactly why I am still not convinced it is a god idea.

For studio to studio, fine.

But for clients?? My clients would NOT be happy with this interface. And the fact that they have to go download something just to use it.....


Also, EVERY e-mail i have received with DigiDeliveries has a link in it that i can NEVER click on. I always have to copy and paste.

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

[QUOTE]
If you are on a Mac, you can highlight any url and Command click. Doing that on Digidelivery links on my Mac always opens it in Digidelivery. A bit easier than copy/paste. Same thing for web urls in any document or email that are not already clickable links.

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

The DD emails and links worked ok (on Mac, Tiger) and I went along because the guys at the video post house were way hot for it. Of course the first thing they did was combine 4 spots worth of AAF and BIG QTs into one delivery, which announced that it would take 5 hours to download. Once we got the QT sizes down and sent the spots separately (so I can work on the first while downloading the others-right guys?) it worked ok, but didn't seem particularly faster than other services or FTP sites with very happening servers. I agree that for clients the idea of them having to download an app to use it is not great--something I do like about YOUSENDIT. What makes DD more secure? I didn't enter a password or anything. Are studios trading big sessions (like whole reels of films, all tracks) with this system?

Philip Perkins

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

One cool thing is that you receive e-mail receipts if someone ahs downloaded your delivery. You won´t be able to track successfull downloads with an FTP server. On the other hand DD is not an equivalent to FTP. You can not store a bunch of files on the server create an open directory so everyone can download the files over and over again. DD is a delivery service. One user sends content to one or more recipients.
No arguments about when what has been sent 3 weeks ago etc. The traffic is trackable.

About security: Deliveries are encrypted before being uploaded. So no one (not even the system admin) will be able to look into the delivery once uploaded. Unfortunatley this is also a great way of hiding NDA violations when sending somthing out.
You can send the de-cryption key via a different way (FAX etc.) so even when the download email is read by a "man in the middle" he won´t be able to download the delivery.

One other advantage: Size!! DD can send up to 16GB large single files. The whole delivery can be much larger. Ever tried to send that via yousendit? I wich you good luck. On the other hand: The manual has been saying "16GB limitations will be overcome in the near future" for many years now so I guess we´ll have to live with that.
All web-based services liek yousendit are limited to 2GB max because browsers can not handle up and download larger than 2GB. There are better alternatives like Pando that also use a client program to overcome these limitations.

Downsides from the admin POV: The administration interface is kinda dated and needs some serious bruch-up. Example you can not re-trigger a download notification emal if the recipient didn´t receive it for what ever reason. In this case the data on the server is dead. YOu can only delete it and ask the sender to re-send all data. Not very cool when a 30GB download is waiting on the server.

Digi and Aspera stated things like "you are in good hands" and announced improvements without being too speciffic so we´ll see if the system is now a technology dinosaur. We need project and user management in DD. Example: it is currently onyl possible to register "guest" and "standard" accounts. There is currently no way to create users that can only use the service within a usergroup. Guests can only send to standard users and standard-users can send to ANY external address. We need user-managemant to enable users to use DD only within a defined group of users to limit the danger of NDA violations. At the moment there is no way to control this.

You can not limit access to user-groups so if you have 5 projects with 10 users each registerd to them a standard users will alsways have to sift through 50 accounts in the list when sending stuff. Nopt great and misuse by sendeing confidential QTs to users outside the system is VERY easy.

It´s extremely easy to use and so far even the biggest computer novice was able to use the client to receive data.

Frank.

Re: Digidelivery vs ?
 

I wish you were right. A GT-Server costs around 10000euro!!!!

frank.