chrismorace
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Flight distance : 89121 ft
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Nees Posted at 2017-6-28 01:05
I'm going to be "that guy".
Why don't you allow users to choose their cloud storage. OneDrive offers for $8,3/Month 5TB storage, so your pricing is A LOT higher. I'm also curious how this app gets access to the SD card to transfer 4K videofiles. You also need to be in wifi for that, so not useful on the go.
Hi Nees,
Thanks so much for your post. You raise some really good points, but let me put them in perspective so you can understand why we think Dragonfly is a fantastic solution for a lot of people even if it ends up not being the right one for you.
- Choosing Cloud Storage: This is a great idea in principle, but the reality is that every cloud storage platform has different API's, issues associated with it, and quirks. I don't think this would even be feasible to do and give a good customer experience.
- One Cloud Pricing: Your One Cloud pricing is misleading when taken out of context. It is true that you can get 5 TB for $9.99/year (https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/), but you only get 5 GB for FREE and 50 GB for $1.99. That means as soon as you have 51 GB you are paying the $9.99. That is how they make their margin to pay for their services because most people will never approach 5 TB.
Also, it is important to note that all they do is provide a hosted file system. Dropbox is similar. It's not an awesome experience to just have a giant list of arcane file names. While your video is backed up, it is not enjoyable. These systems were also designed to be file sync and shares which mean you are also storing them locally. While it is possible with some configuration to only store the files on their cloud, it is not intuitive and makes the user experience very poor as it isn't what they were designed to do. So you end up paying for the hardware, the monthly power, and the subscription just to get backup.
- 10 GB Free: Our free tier is intended to let people try us to see if they enjoy our product without spending any money. Also, new drones like the Spark have lighter weight video, less technical users, and most likely shorter videos so this may be all many of them ever need.
- Sky Drive: I'm glad you brought up Sky Drive. It is actually one of the reasons we did this. We do not believe it is a very good solution. The drive needs power and has no interface. This means that you are having to bring your laptop with you in the field to use it at which point you have to ask yourself why you need the drive. If you are just using it at home connected to a computer it is nice to have the SD slot, but again you are having to pile up hardware, it is not backed up, and just getting an SD card adapter and your favorite drive might have been a more flexible solution. Then you still have all of the same issues around actually enjoying the video mentioned with the File Sync & Share.
Your Storage Rig: You are obviously a technical person :-) Anyone who can say NAS, RAID6, and QNAP in one sentence is more technically sophisticated than most. If that works for you, I think it is great but it does require knowledge many people don't have, QNAS products cost quite a bit of money, and the power to keep the drives up isn't free either when you get to scale. Then you have the issue of enjoyment rather than just storage again. I'm not saying what you have isn't a great and impressive solution, I just don't think it is for everyone.
- Editing: I think you raise a really good point here. We have on our roadmap more trimming functionality and if people want it we will add more editing capabilities as well. We're trying to figure out how to make life easiest for people and understand how often they edit their videos. If it is infrequently then downloading the ones you want to work with and using your favorite editing software is probably what you want to do. On the other hand, if we find people are wanting to edit all of the time or on the fly, we would want to help with that.
Right now we have a fun feature called an Action Mix that automatically creates mixes you can share with the tap of a button. If you don't like it you just tap again to remix. It even adds music and you can do it while you are waiting for a coffee at Starbucks. We also allow you to highlight moments with emotion reactions that our algorithms can use to make better mixes. It's just a start, but hopefully it shows that we want to give new complementary ways of doing things that save people time rather than rebuild what is already out there.
I really appreciate your perspective--I think it is helpful to everyone who is thinking through their options. I'm also glad you're happy with the setup you have. I hope you'll give us a try though, and if you think of anything that would make your experience better we are all ears. :-) |
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