Wow. I’ll e-mail you for the info.
He may be a thief, but I think he’s partly ignorant as well. He’s donating his time to do the editing (because this is a pretty neat looking project to have on his resume, not because he’s an especially generous guy) and I guess he’s not looking to take on more work for free–so there’s virtually no chance I would pay him his day rate to learn. You’re absolutely right about that. If I’m paying day rates, I’ll pay someone who actually knows how to do the stuff I’m paying for.
Unfortunately, I signed a contract with this guy specifying that I get only a single mini-DV tape, so I guess I’ll have to be careful with it. I can ask him what he’ll charge to provide an extra tape. If he’s not a thief, the fee for burning two should be reasonable, no? We’ll see.
In case of disaster, he’ll have a copy I’m sure, and since I’ve paid for his extra hard drive, I’ll get to keep that too in case of disasters.
