Before you start.
CFexpress changes the calculation of the offload. A half-terabyte card holds an entire production day at high bitrate, and the card itself can deliver that data faster than most consumer storage can swallow. The job becomes about pacing — feeding the slow destinations without blocking the fast ones, and reading the card exactly once so the camera's media doesn't get hit twice.
- SyncShot installed
- Latest build on the Mac doing the offload. Open and signed in before the card connects.
- A real CFexpress reader
- Type B or Type A, matched to the card. Thunderbolt or USB4 host port. A bus that can move the bytes the card can deliver.
- Destinations on separate buses where possible
- External SSDs on their own ports, NAS on the wired network, cloud over the WAN. Less bus contention means more throughput end to end.
- Enough free space everywhere
- CFexpress cards are big. Confirm every destination has at least the card's used capacity free, plus headroom for the next shoot.
Step by step.
- 01
Connect the CFexpress reader to a real port
CFexpress reads fast — Type B can clear two gigabytes a second on the right reader. Use a Thunderbolt or USB4 reader on a port that can actually deliver that bus. A USB-A reader becomes the floor of the whole job.
- 02
Mount every destination first
Before the card connects, make sure every target is mounted and writable. External SSDs plugged into their own bus where possible, NAS share connected in Finder, cloud bucket added in SyncShot. Less bus contention, faster job.
- 03
Open SyncShot and select the card
The CFexpress card appears as a source. Pick it. The file tree shows the camera's folders — RAW stills, video clips, the high-bitrate codecs the body uses on this size of card.
- 04
Add every destination at once
Working SSD, archive NAS, off-site cloud — add all of them as destinations on the same job. SyncShot will read the card exactly once and feed every destination in parallel, regardless of how many you choose.
- 05
Let the bus pacing handle itself
Pick start and walk away. SyncShot doesn't try to write every destination at peak speed all at once — it paces each write so the bus isn't saturated and the card isn't read more than it needs to be.
- 06
Use the progress view if the shoot is time-pressured
The progress view shows per-destination throughput. If you need to free the working SSD first — to start an edit while the rest copies — confirm it's ahead in the queue, then start editing as soon as it lands.
- 07
Wait for verification across every destination
The fast destinations finish first. The slow ones — particularly the cloud — keep going in the background. Don't pull the card or eject anything until the report is green across every destination.
After it's done.
A verified CFexpress offload is the cleanest single hand-off in the studio. One job, one card, one read, every destination — that's the bar, and the job report is the proof. The next shoot starts the moment the report goes green.
- Open the job report
- Every clip, every still, every destination. Confirm green across every row. The high-bitrate clips are the ones to double-check — they're the largest and the most expensive to re-create.
- Save the workflow as the studio default
- Save the destination set as the standard CFexpress workflow. Every card from every body uses the same job — same archive root, same verification, no manual configuration under pressure.
- Format the card in the camera
- Once verified, format the card in the camera body — not in macOS. The body knows the file system it wants; the Mac doesn't need to argue with it.
For the SD and CFexpress source detail, see SD card offloading. Need to prove the copy? Verifying with BLAKE3. More step-by-step at the user guide hub.