Offload Manager was designed to support your basic offloading tasks on set: It enables secure backups and documents your work in comprehensive reports.
Besides these obvious gains, there are a number of advantages “under the hood” that the offload manager creates. While not immediately apparent, they can make your daily work on set significantly easier. In this blog post, we want to discuss some of these “hidden” benefits.
Benefits During the Offload Process
Properly offloading camera footage can be a challenging task. You often have to offload multiple camera cards with different formats, ideally all at the same time. To make things easier for you, the Offload Manager offers some convenient features that simplify the overall offload process.
a) Automatically Structure Offloads in the Application and on the Drive
Imagine that you have to handle offloads for a multi-day project, and somebody asks you about the details of an offload you’ve done on the first day.
With the Offload Manager, you can easily look up individual offload jobs. Within each project, the software automatically structures offloads into groups. These groups can, for example, be organized by shooting day. In this case, one group would hold together all offloads of one specific shooting day. The user can even adopt this structure to the folder structure of the drive by using the default path wildcards*.
The default path wildcards (see screenshot below) create the corresponding folder structure on the destination drive. This way, the default path wildcards ensure an easy and well-structured order not just in the software but also on the drive.
b) Easily Switch Between Pre-Defined Offload Settings with Offload Templates
Over the course of a day, you often receive multiple cards from different cameras or audio recorders that need to be backed up to different locations. The Offload Manager allows you to pre-define different offloading settings as an offload template. This way, you can easily switch to the specific settings for the card type that has to be offloaded next.
The offload templates hold together the complete offload configuration (including destinations, path wildcards, checksum methods, etc.). Once prepared and stored, the right offload configuration can be changed in a second when the next card comes in.
Multiple offload templates can also be used
- to make sure audio clips from audio recorders go into the correct folder structure on the destination drive
- to back up making-of footage to separate drives multiple times a day in between main camera cards
c) Maximum Security: Transparent Copy and Verification Check
The Offload Manager always finishes the copy process first and then automatically attaches the verification process.
The status of both processes is documented separately in the software, so you’re always informed about the current status of your copy and verification tasks.
Benefits During Reporting
Knowing that all camera footage is securely backed up on the destinations already completes a big part of your work. But your work doesn’t end here. All copied media should be documented, and corresponding information needs to be passed on to relevant people on set or in post. The Offload Manager not only supports you by automatically creating reports, but it also allows you to tailor them to the needs of the receiver:
a) Pre-defined Column Layouts for Reports
With Offload Manager, you can provide people with relevant metadata for subsequent production steps. To do so, you can choose from a clearly structured set of table layouts for the report.
b) Comprehensive Report Summaries That Understand Formats and Basic Metadata
The “Offloads Report” documents all offloaded media. It includes the total time of all shot clips, as well as all format types that were used. All format types are automatically recognized by the Offload Manager and summarized comprehensively.
Having access to additional and clearly structured information about formats creates benefits for many involved parties, like editors, cinematographers, and production. This again strengthens the importance of solid data management on set and lets the data wrangler shine.
Offloads Report: Formats Example 1
Offloads Report: Formats Example 2
By working with the Offload Manager, you not only make sure that your backups are secure and that your work is well-documented. You also benefit from a straightforward and simple offload process that is tailored to your needs and the challenges you face on set. Give the Offload Manager a try and experience all benefits for yourself!
*Path wildcards make the destination folder structure definable by using metadata from the footage.
Camera Backups and Reports – Simple and Secure
