Card offload
Also known as: ingest, offloading footage
Copying a card to a computer or drive and confirming it arrived, the step between the last run of the day and anything resembling an edit.
Updated
What it means
An offload is a copy plus a check. The copying is trivial and the checking is what distinguishes it from dragging a folder across, because a copy that reported success can still turn out to be wrong.
It is also where organisation happens or does not. Files land in a structure with a date and a camera, or they land in a folder called new, and the second choice gets paid for later on.
Nothing afterwards can fix what goes wrong here. A Memory card formatted after an unverified copy is the single most common way a session disappears entirely.
How it works in practice
Verification belongs in the tool. A copy utility that compares both sides will catch a Checksum mismatch while the card is still sitting in the reader, which is the only moment a recopy is free.
A naming scheme decided once pays for itself immediately. A File naming convention applied at this stage is what makes a session from this card findable again in a year.
Two copies before formatting is the rule that matters. One on a working drive and one elsewhere, and only then does Card formatting become safe to do.
What to watch out for
Formatting too early is unrecoverable. The card is the only copy until something has verified the new one, and the temptation to clear it for the next session is strongest at exactly that moment.
Reading through the camera is slow and risky. A cable to the body drains a battery and takes far longer than a reader, and a battery dying mid-copy produces Corrupted frames or a file that never finished writing.
Deleting on the card afterwards is the wrong order. Removing failures before the copy saves time; removing them after means the copy already already contains all of it anyway.
How RawClip handles it
Uploading can happen directly from a card or from a drive, and either way the footage is read rather than moved. The offload still matters, because an upload is not a backup and the originals remain the only full-quality copy anybody has.