Many ISPs have a two-tier quota system. My ISP gives me a separate data allowance for off peak which is between 2am and 8am. I thought this would be a perfect for uploading images to my client’s FTP server. But, how do I kick off a transfer in the middle of the night?
I’ve been using Transmit as my FTP software. My photographer buddies also use Photo Mechanic. Both are great for real time uploading at an event but I wanted something that will allow me to schedule the upload. I was quite surprised that Transmit didn’t have the ability to schedule the transfer and hunting around didn’t find many Mac apps that had this feature. I know that I could have written a command line script and then use the Unix cron system to schedule the transfer but I wanted to find a solution that non-technical photographers could use.
I settled on Yummy FTP. It’s a cheesy name but it certainly did what it claimed. I scheduled the FTP to start at 3am and it uploaded 1.2GB of files at 80% of the nominal speed of my upload link. The software maintained a stable 380MB per hour (see screenshot below). I’ll keep using Yummy over the next 30 days trial period and compare it with Transmit. If I continue to need to schedule uploads I’ll be forking over my money for Yummy.
