[00:00:09.160] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.560] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.150] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.130] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:14.320] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon," and Marty has decided he doesn't want to stay and join us today. So he's off. This is a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have happened in the last seven days to do with our businesses as self-employed people. So I hope you've all been well this last week. We had a special guest last week, and we'd like to thank Paul for joining us.
[00:00:42.830] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:43.180] - Gordon
I think it was a really interesting episode. We hope you enjoyed it as well. Since then, shall I start?
[00:00:50.050] - Taylor
Yeah, you start this week.
[00:00:51.370] - Gordon
So I have been doing some video, some videography for a church that have lots of nuns in it. And every now and then they have a profession which is which is basically when a nun gets married to God. So they come down in a wedding dress, they go off with their grey clothes. They've probably got really important names, and I'm afraid I don't know enough about it to be able to tell you what they are. And then they come back during the service and they finish off their profession. And there's a bishop there, and this is something that I do, I think I've done about seven or eight of these now. I just get called in when it's needed. And it's a really interesting challenge because I use two cameras and in fact, this time I used a DSLR as well as my video camera, and I was putting the DSLR through into an "atomos," which is a screen that has a hard drive in it and records what you send to it. Now, this is important because DSLR cameras, when you do video, normally have a 29 minute and 59 second recording limit. Did you know that?
[00:02:20.510] - Taylor
I did. But only because you've told me.
[00:02:22.760] - Gordon
So, the reason for this is, that when you are importing cameras into the U.K., if they can record for longer than half an hour, then an extra tax bracket gets added on and it becomes a recording device, not just a photography camera. So they limit it to 29 minutes and 59 seconds, which means that if I was to press record and then leave it and go off and do what I'm supposed to do with the other camera, after 29 minutes, the camera will shut off. So I record it now using the HDMI camera cable, it comes out, goes into the screen, records it, and hopefully everything's OK. However, why I don't know, but it kept stopping after 29 minutes. So even though I was using my screen. It's never done this before. Even though I was using my screen it was stopping every 29 minutes, which made the editing process a lot more difficult. However, "Final Cut Pro" has a great way of dealing with this, and I will talk about that as my topic a little bit later. So, just to finish off my little bit for the last week, that's been quite a chunk of my time. So it's been an evening, one evening of filming because of social distancing and having to wear masks and everything else, it made it a lot more difficult than normal. However, there were a lot less people there. There were 17 people in the congregation. There were more nuns and bishops and priests than there were audience, as it were. Get me calling them an audience. That's the magician in me coming out, that is. And yeah, it made a lot more difficult to move around because I had to try and keep away from people, which was very difficult to do. But yeah, it's quite a long service as well. The the Order of Service, which is a booklet, was 24 pages long.
[00:04:26.080] - Taylor
Wow.
[00:04:26.600] - Gordon
Yeah, I know. It's a lot of words, a lot of text. And there was no singing, because singing is not allowed at the moment. So it was a very different type of event. Oh, and every time one of the priests or the bishop handled anything, they had to cover themself in hand gel and wash beforehand. So that obviously elongated the service even longer. It was an interesting challenge. So that was a big part of my week. What have you been up to?
[00:04:59.230] - Taylor
So this week I've been moving to an all in one system for kind of business management. So I track time and how long it takes me to do things, to then bill the client for the project. I have to put all my client details into a database or some sort of table, to keep track of all of them. I have to add projects so that I can add more projects to one client, for example, if they've got more than one project or website. And also my accounting, so my, all of my expenses and things like that, and my subscriptions. And I have been using a number of various different tools to manage this. However, I'm now going to be moving or have been moving to a new system called "And.Co," it's, I think...
[00:05:52.450] - Gordon
So that's A-N-D dot C-O.
[00:05:53.950] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:05:54.370] - Gordon
And dot co.
[00:05:55.360] - Taylor
I believe it's built and owned by "Fiverr," which are a freelancing gig company or website.
[00:06:03.460] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:06:04.720] - Taylor
And it's really good actually. So, it allows you to track time and assign it to projects and then you can then look and see how long the project's been. It has really quick one one click invoicing, so you just click, you know, 'add invoice' and it will kind of automatically populate the invoice with the time that you've spent without having to worry about that. And it does subscriptions as well, which for monthly fees and things like that, I can do that and it just automatically takes it out like a direct debit. And moving into all this all in one means I don't forget about work, that I haven't billed for, which is something that I do sometimes have because I use different, I use "Toggle," and I use "Wave," or I used "Wave" before, I never kind of knew if I hadn't billed for something, I'd have to go and manually look at it.
[00:06:59.560] - Gordon
So you're using two different systems and it's a manual process to look and see how much time "Toggle" has showing outstanding, and then...
[00:07:08.860] - Taylor
Well it doesn't, it doesn't show outstanding. It's just a...
[00:07:11.740] - Gordon
Just a list.
[00:07:12.370] - Taylor
Ongoing list of all the different time entries.
[00:07:13.950] - Gordon
So you then have to manually find out how much time has not been billed for...
[00:07:19.600] - Taylor
Since the last time I invoice them.
[00:07:20.720] - Gordon
Put it through into the invoicing system? OK.
[00:07:24.370] - Taylor
And it's a long process with moving it over, purely because, there's two ways I could do it. I could do it, go down the just add all my previous invoices in and don't worry about the previous time tracking. However, I want to add it in so that I can then have an overview, and see how many hours have I done for this client? Which clients am I earning the most money from? Things like that, and all these different stats.
[00:07:48.850] - Gordon
Yes. So the more data you've got, the more you can extrapolate from it.
[00:07:52.030] - Taylor
Yeah. The only problem is, since I started over a year ago, in July 2019, there have been over 1800 time entries.
[00:08:06.073] - Gordon
Ok. So that's a start and a stop.
[00:08:07.690] - Taylor
Yes, it probably could get condensed down, so I could do it per day, for example, which I may end up doing. I may end up doing it via, either per day or um, yeah, so...
[00:08:23.530] - Gordon
So there's no easy import system for this.
[00:08:25.150] - Taylor
No not for this, no. Which is annoying, but apart from that, everything else is kind of really, really good. And so I guess it's a one time thing, and once that's done then I have, and if I ever were to move away, which I hopefully won't be able to, they do have an export feature to do that so I can export all the information.
[00:08:44.080] - Gordon
OK. So, let me just ask you a question. Apart from having separate applications to do the job that your new system is doing. Is there anything else that you found was difficult to do, or that is much better to do in the new system?
[00:09:04.930] - Taylor
So I can set up recurring expenses so for things that I pay monthly for, so my laptop or things like back-up system.
[00:09:16.870] - Gordon
So this is an accounting system as well?
[00:09:18.880] - Taylor
Yes, so it has accounting attached to it, so it can link with my bank, although I'm not sure on the regulations in the UK in terms of if they can pull in transactions from there.
[00:09:30.850] - Gordon
They should be able to because 'open banking' is a thing now.
[00:09:34.280] - Taylor
Yeah. And so I can do that so then any new transactions are automatically added. I know I just need to say what it was and what it was for and give myself a note so I know about it later. But for things that are recurring, especially kind of direct debits, I can kind of set it up and forget about it and don't have to worry about it. So recently I've been, or in the past I've had to do it manually, where every time I have to go in and duplicate it and...
[00:10:03.280] - Gordon
That's not a great system then. And that's, that was in Wave was it?
[00:10:07.180] - Taylor
I mean, Wave was great for what it was, but because I do time tracking, I needed, I wanted to be able to have it all in one place. If you don't need to time track then I would highly recommend Wave because it is free, and this new system isn't free. But...
[00:10:22.180] - Gordon
So what's it costing you at the moment?
[00:10:24.220] - Taylor
I believe it's, it's about $20 I believe.
[00:10:30.460] - Gordon
A month.
[00:10:31.090] - Taylor
I think, roughly. It was, I was looking at another one called "Bonsai," and I was...
[00:10:36.830] - Gordon
Like the tree.
[00:10:37.780] - Taylor
Yeah. I was close to moving over to it and it was really, really good and it actually has more features than And.Co does. The only downside is it's more expensive. It's I think it's double the price, it's about $40 in total a month.
[00:10:54.430] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:10:55.720] - Taylor
And you know, although it wasn't their fault, there was a lot of features that were lacking and made it frustrating. So, I accidentally imported time tracking, all my time tracking data.
[00:11:10.910] - Gordon
All 1800 entries.
[00:11:12.370] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:13.570] - Gordon
Ok.
[00:11:13.570] - Taylor
And I had accidentally, I didn't connect it up properly. So I hadn't put an email address attached to, and I thought just putting a project in and they would match up the project names, because I've got them exactly.
[00:11:25.030] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:11:25.030] - Taylor
But that's not how it worked.
[00:11:26.560] - Gordon
It was per customer was it?
[00:11:28.330] - Taylor
It's per email address. So it finds your client email, and then once it's found the client it then finds the project. So I guess you can have the same name for, the same project name, but for different clients.
[00:11:39.820] - Gordon
OK.
[00:11:40.810] - Taylor
And I then was in a bit of a difficult situation because I couldn't delete them, there was no bulk delete or anything, and I had to kind of talk to the chat and the team behind it and see if they can help. And, you know, I spent so many hours on trying to fix this, and find a way around it that I just thought, you know, I need to, I need something that, you know, has 'bulk edit,' for example, and has these basic features that you assume that you have in most things.
[00:12:11.480] - Gordon
Especially for something that's twice the price of the one you're on now. I mean, it's interesting that, not interesting; it's better now that you've found flaws in a potential system that you were going to use instead of, and spent a few hours on it, rather than coming to it sort of six months down the road and then going, "do you know what, this just isn't for me."
[00:12:34.190] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:34.650] - Gordon
And then finding you've got six months worth on this system and then all the other data before that, that you've now got to move into another system.
[00:12:43.370] - Taylor
Yes. So, I mean, nothing to Bonsai. They are a great company and their support was superb, but...
[00:12:50.540] - Gordon
It just wasn't at all for you.
[00:12:52.670] - Taylor
There was a few limiting things that although they could fix it, they said that they could delete the CSVs, by the time that they got round to replying to that and stuff, I needed to move it over into a system already. And...
[00:13:05.720] - Gordon
Yep.
[00:13:05.720] - Taylor
You know, I needed those features and functionality...
[00:13:08.240] - Gordon
Because you hadn't stopped working, you're still working; you're still having to send out these invoices; you're still needing to do the time tracking. Oh, good. Well, it sounds like you've found a good system. We'll possibly check back with you on that in a few episodes just to see how it's working out for you.
[00:13:24.050] - Taylor
So tell me more about the video with the nuns on Final Cut Pro.
[00:13:29.490] - Gordon
So the big feature that I really, really like with Final Cut Pro, which is a Mac video editor. It's made by Apple, which is the same people who make the Mac. And it's just great. I mean, when it came out, it was a standard editor and then they changed completely. So they bought a brand new version out, which was written from scratch. And it had a completely different way of working. And in the past, there was a lot of people who complained that it didn't do what they wanted it to do because they were used to the previous way of doing it. As it turns out, most of those people, if not all of those people, now agree that the new system is actually much better. But you need to get your head around it. And I was with Final Cut for the early version and then moved across to the new version and sort of got it quite quickly, so I was able to carry on working. But the one feature I really, really like is called 'MultiCam.' Any ideas what MultiCam does?
[00:14:42.020] - Taylor
It's multiple cameras.
[00:14:43.670] - Taylor
It's exactly right. So it takes two or more cameras. In this case I had two, and it will synchronise the clips from both cameras using the sound, the audio. So what you end up with is one track with two layers. OK? And then it makes it really easy to edit, because all you do is, you drag this track into your timeline and it shows whichever track you currently have selected and you can specify the video and the audio separately. So what I've done on this occasion is I had two cameras, two microphones, and they were both recording audio. So I've duped them up, I've turned on the audio for both. So you're getting the sound coming from both cameras at the same time merged together, which gives a better sound in, of everything that's going on. So there's one that's sort of in the congregation area and one that's up by the bishop. So you get good sound all the way round. And then I cut between the visuals, so between the camera video. And it's such a simple way of doing it. You press 'play,' you let it play, you've got both of the visuals showing at the same time in sync, synchronised, and you use just the number one and the number two on the keypad, and every time you press it, it makes a cut for you. And when you stop all the cuts that you made at the time you made them are done and it makes life so much easier and you can go back and tweak them if you need to. If you go, "do you know what? I want that cut sort of six frames before the cut is actually there," you can just drag it back six frames and it's perfect, and it makes life really easy. And it's one of the reasons I like doing two camera shoots because can you imagine if MultiCam feature didn't exist?
[00:16:45.810] - Taylor
It would take a lot of trying to line up.
[00:16:48.690] - Gordon
Yeah. Every single time you want to cut to a different camera, you'd have to grab the feed and try and find out the exact point that you're at, it would just be horrid. It's a really, really good system, and it's been designed to work in the same way; so it's a bit like in a live studio if you've ever seen the control room where they have lots of screens with all the different camera angles, and the director will say, "camera three, camera seven," and then the editor will live edit and go to those cameras. And it's a great system. It just makes life so much quicker and easier. So if you are looking to edit video and you've got a Mac start with "iMovie," that's a good place to start. And then if you find you need something a bit more professional, a bit more customisable, go and get Final Cut Pro. It's one off charge, not like Adobe, where they charge you every month. It's a one off cost.
[00:17:48.160] - Taylor
Wonderful. I think that's it from us this week.
[00:17:50.230] - Gordon
I think it is. So, as always, you can find us, like and subscribe on YouTube and on Facebook.
[00:17:59.060] - Taylor
And you can also find us at thisweekwith.co.uk, where you have all the past audio, video and also our show notes.
[00:18:07.800] - Gordon
And if you want to get in contact with me, you can find me at draysondesign.com.
[00:18:12.710] - Taylor
And you can find me at thecreativetinker.com.
[00:18:16.040] - Gordon
We'll see you next week at 1pm.
[00:18:18.530] - Taylor
Goodbye.
[00:18:18.950] - Gordon
Bye bye.
