Hedge Alternatives for Mac: What to Use Instead

Hedge was the default SD card offload tool for Mac photographers and video editors for years. Fast, simple, verified copies. Not much to configure. In 2024 it rebranded to OffShoot, and the pricing changed substantially: $169 for the standard tier, $249 for Pro. If you were on an old Hedge license that cost around $39, that's a significant jump.

Whether you're here because of the price, because you want a tool that does more than just the offload, or because you're setting up a new workflow from scratch, here's what the alternatives actually look like.

What OffShoot (Formerly Hedge) Actually Does

Before getting into alternatives, it helps to be clear about what you're replacing.

OffShoot does one thing: it copies footage from cards to drives and confirms every file arrived intact. After the transfer, it checks each file against the original and flags anything that didn't copy correctly. You find out before you reformat the card, not three months later in the edit. Finder just copies and assumes it worked. For large video files that's occasionally not true, and Finder won't tell you. The way OffShoot catches this is called checksum verification, the baseline feature that all three tools on this list share, and the main reason to use any of them over Finder.

OffShoot also supports multiple destinations simultaneously and, in the Pro tier, S3 cloud destinations. Transfer speeds are good. The interface is clean. Once the card is out, OffShoot is done.

Shotput Pro

Shotput Pro covers the same job: verified offloads from cards to drives. Transfer speeds are in the same range as OffShoot. For most shoots you won't notice a difference.

Where Shotput earns its place is reporting. After every transfer, it generates a PDF with a full file manifest, timecode data, codec breakdowns, and a thumbnail for each clip. On productions where a post house or producer needs a paper trail of every transfer, that report matters. They ask for it more often than you'd expect.

Pricing is $169 for a perpetual license, with updates included for the first year. After that, updates cost $59/year. There's also a $60/30-day rental if you only need it for one project.

If reports aren't part of your deliverables, Shotput and OffShoot are functionally equivalent at the same price. If they are, Shotput is the obvious pick.

Best for: productions that require documented transfer records. Post house handoffs, jobs where a producer will later ask which card a specific clip came from.

Silverstack

Silverstack is a different category entirely. It's not just offload software, it's a full on-set DIT station.

The feature that sets it apart is cascade transfers. Silverstack copies to a fast local SSD first. While it copies from that SSD to slower destinations in the background, you can already start the next card. On a day with a lot of cards, this makes a real difference. You're not blocked waiting for a slow drive to finish before you can touch the next one.

On top of that, Silverstack handles metadata editing, audio sync, and proxy generation that starts while transfers are still running. For a working DIT running a proper on-set workflow, it covers most of what you need in one place.

The price reflects it. Silverstack XT is €799/year as a subscription. Short-term licenses go for €99 for 10 days, €179 for a month, and €319 for two months. For a freelance editor doing their own offloads occasionally, that's a lot of money for a tool you might not use regularly. For a production company shooting daily, the math changes.

Best for: on-set DIT work with high card volume. Cascade transfers, proxy generation, and audio sync alongside the offload.

Tusk

All three dedicated ingest tools share the same gap: they stop when the transfer finishes.

After that, keeping track of what's where is on you. Files spread across drives over time. Local copies get deleted when space runs out. Six months later, finding a specific clip means digging through drives and hoping you remember which one has it.

I built Tusk because backup should be simple and you should always know where your files are. When you offload a card, Tusk copies directly to all your destinations and confirms everything arrived intact. The card is safe to reformat.

From there, Tusk keeps going. It watches your project folders and picks up every change automatically: re-edits, new exports, autosaved project files. All of it goes to your backup destinations in the background. And it indexes every file's location across all your drives, including when those drives are unplugged. Months after a shoot, Tusk tells you which drive a specific file is on without you having to connect anything. Before you delete local copies to free up space, it shows you exactly what's safe to remove.

Pricing is $79 one-time, or $49 during the current launch offer. 14-day free trial with no credit card or email required.

Best for: photographers, video editors, and content creators who want SD card ingest and ongoing project backup in one tool.

Side by Side

Which One Fits?

For on-set DIT work at a production level, Silverstack is the only tool built for it. Cascade transfers, proxy generation, audio sync. Nothing else on this list does that.

If your deliverables include documented transfer records, Shotput and OffShoot cost the same and Shotput adds the PDF reports.

If you want ingest plus everything that comes after it, Tusk covers the full workflow at less than the cost of any dedicated ingest tool.