Cloud Storages Compared - Part 2

  In Part 1, I go through the various pros and cons of a select few cloud providers, and what I discover as I'm test using the services. Read Part 1 first and then let's continue our discovery here.

STATUS ICONS

 I have to correct myself about kDrive not visually signaling the difference between offline and online files with status icons, it actually works. I noticed he same phenomena happening with DropBox status icons which are similar looking. Grey cloud icon, file in the cloud only, free checkmark, file on local drive and in the cloud.

 The problem according to Infomaniak (makers of kDrive), is that too many File Providers create confusion on the whole system, and status icons tend to disappear. If you turn other apps File Providers off and on again, the kDrive/DropBox status icons appears. It's kind of random.

 It is weird that this affects every file and folder on the Mac considering each provider should only be concerned by their dedicated sync folder, not the folders of their peers. I suppose Apple has only implemented an all or nothing function at this point. Needs improvements.

 (*) Note that Mega nor Jotta have a cloud only option, so the status icons are only there to indicate upload in progress (red), or file fully uploaded to the cloud (green.)

USER SPECIFIED FOLDER

 iCloud, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, and Internxt do not let user specify a local folder. Instead the sync folder goes to: User/youruser/Library/CloudStorage. You cannot change the location. I don't fully understand this behavior. Google explanation as to how this is supposed to work makes it even more confusing. Depending on your needs, that might work or not for you.

Cloud Provider	Status Icons	User Specified Folder	Movies Preview	Rename Extension	Detailed Info
iCloud	Yes	No	Yes	No	Basic
OneDrive	Yes	No	Bad	No	Basic+
Mega	Yes*	Yes	Yes	Yes	Basic
GoogleDrive	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Basic
Internxt	Yes	No	Yes**	No	Basic
kDrive	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Basic
DropBox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Best
Drime	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Basic
JottaCloud	Yes*	Yes	Yes	Yes	Basic/None

MOVIES PREVIEWS

 Common encoding schemes like h264 are recognized, but others (like ProRes) are not, and so there is no preview for these less common codecs across the board.

 OneDrive previews are an abomination, they look awful like they are over compressed (for the sake of quick access I suppose), which makes the experience borderline useless.

(**)  Internxt is the only one that systematically fails at previewing most movie files, including ".mov" and common codecs. Only previews that work seem to be h264 ".mp4".

RENAME EXTENSION (Web App behavior)

 iCloud, OneDrive, Internxt do not allow you to change the extension of a file in the web app. You cannot rename a ".mov" file as ".mp4" for example. I do not like that.

DETAILED INFO

 Most providers only provide basic information, type of file, size, location. OneDrive gives you some useful info like frame size. DropBox is by far the best with info about capturing device, resolution, frame rate, color space, and even codec. All the others are pale in comparison.

For Adjusting macOS Apps Relative Audio Levels There Is FineTune

  FineTune is a well polished sound app that allows for adjusting levels from multiple apps playing audio on your Mac.

 If like me you want to listen to sound effects or music online, and simultaneously playback ProTools, or Audition, but the browser player has no adjustable level and the music is awfully loud, or the level is only adjustable for each item - which is cumbersome, you need an app to adjust relative audio levels between apps. A function sorely lacking on Macs since... Forever. 🍎 Bad Apple!

 That's where FineTune takes over. Adjust the relative level of Firefox to 50% and you now can hear your ProTools session properly. Wonderful!

 It can also adjust outputs levels, and has a graphical EQ available for each source. And it remembers your settings.

 It is similar to Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource, only it's free. Available on Github. If you like FineTune, you can buy Ronit a Kofi here.

Batch Convert Audio Files With iZotope RX

  You can batch convert audio files, including old ".sd2" files with the help of iZotope RX, including RX7 which I own.

 In RX7, select Window/Batch Processing. The batch processing window opens:

Drag and drop a dummy file in the "Input Files" section.

 Add a Processing step by clicking the + button. Select Apply: "Resample" from the list.

 Select With: Preset, or a custom settings to your choice. I chose 48k.

 Note that you can add as many Processing steps as you like, all the processing within RX are present: De-click, Normalize, etc. Save file as: your choice, I chose BWF. Set output options allows to select the destination, and the bitrate, I chose 24bit.

 Rename the batch process to your liking, I named it "Convert to BWF 48k 24bit". Now you can delete your dummy file from the list, the batch process is ready to use. You can create as many as you want and they will be listed there next time you open RX.

 Drag from the Finder to add the files you want to batch convert to the Input files section. Press Process! And let it rip!

Avid Hates You - "idk.app" Is Damaged And Can't Be Opened

  Avid hates you, Avid likes to eat your soul, Avid is bloated software, Avid is too old school even for an old fart like me.

What the F*&k is this Avid?

 Not only your software is way too big, gobbling over 8GB of space on my drive, but your stupid installer is installing crap apps, or installing shit so wrong that macOS has to block it.

jdk.app BLOCKED!

 Seriously what the F*&k Avid? Media Composer is the only software that you have to battle every single time you fire it up. No peace ever with MC. After battling it for hours it might work fine for a few days, or a few weeks if you're lucky. But as soon as you change anything on your system, god forbid update anything, you are a target for Avid ire. MC will break, somehow, somewhere.

 I only use Media Composer and Pro Tools from Avid, I have no idea how other Avid software works. Compared to MC, Pro Tools is much more stable, but as you probably know, Avid acquired Pro Tools from Digidesign, and in my mind it has much better bones.

 Why can't Avid make Media Composer more stable and better is a mystery to me. 😑

Which App Is Best To Remove Telecine Pulldown In 2026?

  If you have to deal with pulldown removal in 2026, there is one app that does it best.

 It's not Final Cut Pro, it's not Apple Compressor, it's not Premiere, nor Adobe Media Encoder, it's not Avid Media Composer, it's not After Effects.

 For those of you who do not know what that's about, pulldown is a trick used when transferring film to tape, in the old days of telecine transfers.

 In order to see films that are 24 progressive frames per second on Television which used to be 30 interlaced (or 60 (1/2 frame "fields") per seconds, the telecine process repeated some frames in a predetermined sequence, usually in a 3-2 pattern.

 If you want to know more about telecine, read this great entry Telecine Explained.

 For example the film sequence of 24 frames:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24

Was transferred as follow in a 60 frames sequence:

1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,5,6,6,7,7,7,8,8,9,9,9,10,10,11,11,11,12,12,13,13,13,14,14,15,15,15,16,16,17,17,17,18,18,19,19,19,20,20,21,21,21,22,22,23,23,23,24,24

 Now since the complete frame consists of 2 interlaced fields, the TV had some frames composed of identical fields / image, and other frames composed of different fields / image.

 In our example, TV frame 1 is composed of film frames 1,1 - identical. But TV frame 2 is composed of film frames 1,2 - different. TV frame 3 is film 2,3 - different, and TV frame 4 is film frames 3, 3 - identical.

 When you want to go from the telecine 30fps interlaced back to the 24fps progressive, you have to perform pulldown removal = removing the duplicated fields, AND reassembling the complete film frames in the proper order.

 The software (or yourself if operating manually) has to recognize the proper sequence, pull and reassemble the proper fields into frames. Which is easily said, but because of the nature of video can be a headache.

 For example you might not have a (3-2) 1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,4,4 sequence, and instead have a (2-3) 1,1,2,2,2,3,3,4,4,4 one. If the software expects duplicated fields in a 3,2,3,2 sequence and instead gets a 2,3,2,3 sequence it will fail. Or the sequence might start on a random field, and then it's not 3-2 nor 2-3, but some bastardized version thereof.

 In addition, there are other flavors / combinations of pulldown sequences that might or might not be recognized properly.

 After Effects has the most extensive pattern recognition and manual override for removing pull-down, but it is nevertheless prone to failure.

 Back in the days of Final Cut Pro Legacy (Classic Versions 1-7), and Final Cut Studio (R.I.P), we had Cinema Tools! That was the perfect app to remove pulldown. And it did that instantly, writing the resulting file in a matter of seconds. Alas, unless you kept a old Mac running an old OS with the old tools installed, no more Cinema Tools for us post pros.

 In 2026 the one app that does a great job is... DaVinci Resolve! Click "Remove Pulldown" in the clip attributes, drop your 29,97 interlaced clip into a 24 progressive timeline, done. Render clean, error free, un-telecined file.

 These are the settings in DVR 20.3:

 Now this is for a single one go telecine transfer where the sequence won't change. If dealing with a telecine, or multiple telecine files that have been edited into a single movie resulting in the sequences being broken multiple times because the cuts have been made randomly, then I don't know how it would behave. I assume it will fail, but I would have to test that theory for myself. That's for another day.

 If you have a favorite way to deal with removing pulldown, let me know in the comments.

Adobe Creative Cloud App Libraries Not Syncing

 If you have an error message in Adobe Creative Cloud App about libraries not syncing on macOS, you might need to grant CC Full Disk access.

In macOS Tahoe 26.3, Go to System Preferences, Privacy and Security, Full Disk Access.

It's likely that Creative Cloud .app is missing from the list of authorized apps, or the slider is off / not authorized.

Either turn the slider on for CC, or add CC (click the + button at the bottom of the list) and select Creative Cloud.app which is in Boot drive/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative/ACC.

CC needs to restart and now that it has Full Disk access your libraries files should sync properly.

Click on the cloud icon within CC to verify the proper syncing.

File Provider According to Google For Cloud Storage On macOS 12.1 And Up

  There is a good write-up by Google on File Provider which is used by macOS 12.1 and up explaining how it works with cloud storage services, including Google Drive.

 You can find it here.

 Among other things it stipulates that the streaming location is controlled by macOS and goes into: User/youruser/Library/CloudStorage.

 There is an extensive table comparing the File Provider and Legacy methods of streaming. The differences are sometimes subtle.

 In my observations, Google Drive, iCloudDrive, OneDrive and Internxt Drive are stored in the CloudStorage location.

 Mega Drive, Dropbox Drive, kDrive, Drime, Sync Drive on the other end are stored in a location of my choice, even though they too have extensions in File Provider:

 If you have an explanation as to why that is, I would love to know. Post in the comments. Thanks!