Before you start.
Drone flights are the most expensive footage you carry — time in the air, weather, permits, the shot you can't fly again next Tuesday. The offload should reflect that. Set the destinations up first so the moment the card comes out there's nowhere it can go missing.
- SyncShot installed
- Latest build on the Mac doing the offload. Open and signed in before the flight ends.
- A reader that matches the card
- Most DJI drones use microSD — a UHS-II reader keeps the bus from becoming the floor. Osmo Pocket and some cinema bodies use larger cards; match the reader to the actual media.
- An archive destination ready
- NAS or DAS configured and mounted in Finder before the card connects. Cloud destinations added in SyncShot so the off-site copy moves the same job, not after.
- Flight log clarity
- Know which card was on which flight — colour-coded sleeves, masking tape, anything. The drone doesn't care which card it ate; you will three months from now.
Step by step.
- 01
Land the drone and pull the card
Once the last battery is down, eject the microSD from the aircraft — or the internal card from the Osmo or Pocket body. Have a card reader on the desk before you take it out so it doesn't sit loose.
- 02
Connect the reader to the Mac
macOS mounts the card as a volume. SyncShot sees it as a source the moment Finder does — no DJI Fly, no Assistant, no driver.
- 03
Open SyncShot and pick the card
Choose the card from the source list. The file tree shows the flight folders the drone wrote — DCIM for stills and video, with timestamps you can sort on.
- 04
Choose destinations sized for the flight
Big flight files want big writes. Working SSD for the edit, archive NAS or DAS for the long-term hold, and an off-site cloud bucket for the master copy. Pick all of them so nothing single-points-of-failure.
- 05
Add a flight-folder name
Use a root folder named for the date and location of the flight. SyncShot lands every file under that root on every destination so the flight stays grouped wherever you look for it.
- 06
Hit start
SyncShot reads the card once and writes to every destination in parallel. Long video clips copy in single passes; the fastest destination finishes first, the slower ones keep going in the background.
- 07
Verify the report and archive the card
When the report is green, the flight is safe in every destination. Format the card in the drone itself once verified — the aircraft knows the right file system, the Mac doesn't need to guess.
After it's done.
Flight footage tends to live longer than other footage — the edit might happen weeks later, the location might never be flown again. The archive copy is the one that matters most. Make sure it's the one that's verified.
- Open the job report
- Confirm every file landed green in every destination. The archive and off-site copies are the ones to check most closely — they're the ones you'll come back to.
- Save a drone workflow
- Save the source pattern and destinations. Next flight, the workflow handles it — same archive root, same destinations, no chance of forgetting the off-site copy.
- Format the card in the aircraft
- Once the report is green, format the card in the drone body — not in macOS. The aircraft writes the file system it wants, and the Mac doesn't need to argue.
For the DJI source detail, see DJI offloading. Action cameras on the same shoot? See GoPro footage. More step-by-step at the user guide hub.