Hedge vs Shotput Pro vs Silverstack: Best SD Card Offload Software for Mac

You get back from a shoot with cards full of footage that can't be recreated. The first thing you do is get it off those cards and onto drives. The question is which SD card offload software to use.

Most people default to Finder. Drag, drop, wait for the bar to fill. The problem is that Finder doesn't verify the transfer. It can drop bits when moving large files, especially across drives with different formats like exFAT to APFS. The file looks like it copied. The size might even match. But the data inside isn't the same as the original. You'd only find out in post, when it's too late to go back to the card.

That's why dedicated ingest software exists. We talked to a lot of professional photographers and Digital Imaging Technicians (DITs) about what they actually use and why. Three tools come up consistently: Hedge (now rebranded as OffShoot), Shotput Pro, and Silverstack. Here's how they compare.

Why Finder Is Not Safe for SD Card Offloads on Mac

All three tools share one thing Finder doesn't have: checksum verification.

When you copy a file in Finder, macOS transfers the data and assumes it worked. For most everyday files that's fine. For large video files across drives with different formats, bits can get dropped and Finder won't catch it.

What is checksum verification?

Checksum verification is how dedicated ingest software confirms a video file transfer actually worked. Before and after the copy, the software computes a hash of each file — a short string that acts like a fingerprint of the file's exact contents. If the hashes match, the copy is intact. If they don't, something went wrong and the software flags it. This is sometimes called a checksum copy, and it's the reason professional photographers and DITs use offload software instead of Finder.

That's the baseline feature that makes all three of these tools worth using over Finder, and it's why dedicated SD card offload software for Mac exists at all.

OffShoot (formerly Hedge)

Hedge was one of the most popular offload tools on Mac for years. It recently rebranded to OffShoot, with two tiers: OffShoot at $169 and OffShoot Pro at $249, both one-time purchases. There's also a $49/30-day rental if you only need it for a specific project.

OffShoot is known for being fast and straightforward. Drag your source, pick your destinations, go. Not much to configure, no setup overhead. It supports multiple simultaneous destinations and checksum verification on every transfer.

OffShoot Pro adds things like S3 destinations, advanced presets, and API access, which starts to edge into production territory.

Best for: straightforward offloads where speed and simplicity matter more than reporting or advanced features.

Shotput Pro

Shotput covers the same core use case: verified copies from cards to drives. Transfer speeds are in the same range as OffShoot. For most jobs you won't notice a difference.

Where Shotput pulls ahead 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 someone needs a paper trail of every transfer, that report is genuinely useful. Producers and post supervisors ask for this more often than you'd think.

Pricing is $169 for a perpetual license, with updates included for the first 12 months. After that, keeping updates costs $59/year. There's also a $60/30-day rental option.

Best for: productions that require transfer documentation. Handing off to a post house, jobs where the client wants a record of every card offloaded.

Silverstack

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

The standout feature is cascade transfers. You offload a card to a fast local SSD first. While Silverstack copies from that SSD to your slower destinations in the background, you can already start offloading the next card. On a long shoot day with many cards, this matters a lot. You're not waiting for a slow drive to finish before you can touch the next card.

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

The price reflects that. Silverstack XT is 799 EUR per year, paid as a subscription. There are also temporary licenses for project-based work: 99 EUR for 10 days, 179 EUR for a month, 319 EUR for two months. For a freelance editor doing their own offloads, that's a significant cost for a tool you might use occasionally. For a production company running daily shoots, it makes more sense.

Best for: on-set DIT workflows, high-volume shooting days, productions that need cascade transfers and proxy generation alongside the offload.

Which One Should You Choose?

It depends almost entirely on your context.

OffShoot is the right pick if you just want fast, reliable offloads with no setup overhead. No reports, no production features, just get the footage off the card with verification. For solo shooters and run-and-gun work, that's usually enough.

Shotput Pro makes sense when your deliverables include a paper trail. If you're handing off to a post house, working with a producer who wants records, or on a job where someone will later ask "which card did that clip come from," the PDF reports earn their keep. Same price as OffShoot, so if reports matter even occasionally, it's the more flexible choice.

Silverstack is for on-set DIT work at production scale. If you're managing many cards per day, starting proxies while transfers run, syncing audio, and handing off clean metadata to an editor, Silverstack is built for that. The subscription price only makes sense if you're using most of those features regularly.

If you're a freelancer or independent creator, all three of these tools can start to feel a bit heavy and expensive for what you actually need. That's part of why I built Tusk. It does the SD card offload with the same checksum verification, but it also keeps a running index of every file you've ever offloaded — which drive it's on, whether it's backed up, where to find it months later. More on that at the bottom.

SD Card Offload Software for Mac: Side by Side

What None of Them Handle

All three tools do the same job well: get footage off a card and onto a drive, with verification. That moment is covered.

What they don't do is manage what happens to that footage after the offload.

Once the files are on your drive, you're on your own. Are those files backed up? On how many drives? If you lose one drive, is there another copy? If you deleted the local files to free up space, can you find the backup six months later? Which drive is it on?

This is the part of the backup and archive workflow that most people figure out as they go, usually after losing something.

Where Tusk Fits

For most freelancers and content creators, Tusk covers the whole workflow in one tool — and at $79 one-time (or $49 during our current launch offer), it costs less than OffShoot or Shotput alone, which only handle the ingest.

After a shoot, you can simply plug in your SD card and choose the backup locations. Tusk then streams the footage directly from the card to all of your drives or cloud services at once. No intermediate local copy needed, though you can keep one if you want. BLAKE3 verification runs on every file. Once every copy is confirmed, the card is safe to reformat.

From there, Tusk keeps going. It watches your project folder and picks up every change automatically. Re-edits, new exports, autosaved project files. All of it goes to your backup destinations in the background without you doing anything.

The part the other tools don't do: months later, when a client asks for footage from a shoot you wrapped in January, Tusk tells you exactly which drive it's on. Even if that drive is in a bag somewhere and nothing is plugged in.

For on-set DIT work at a production level, Silverstack still makes sense. Cascade transfers, proxy generation, audio sync. It's built for that context and Tusk isn't trying to be that (yet). But if you're a photographer, video editor, or content creator managing your own shoots, Tusk replaces the separate offload tool and handles everything that comes after.

You can try it out yourself for free. Simply download it and get a 14 day free trial (no credit card nor even an email address needed).
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