16th July 2026
By Luke Lv, Founder, Lumira Studio
We are a video production studio, not a software company. We offload camera cards on real shoots, and we built our own free tool, Stow, because we wanted a simpler answer to one question: has the footage truly copied, and is it safe to wipe the card? This page is an honest look at the main options, including where the paid tools are genuinely worth their money and where a free tool is enough. We have tried to be fair rather than flattering to ourselves.
The one thing they all share
Every serious offload tool does the non-negotiable part: it copies your card to one or more destinations and verifies the copy with checksums (reading the data back to confirm it matches), rather than trusting the operating system’s “copy complete”. If a tool does not verify, do not use it for footage you cannot re-shoot. All four tools below verify.
The comparison
| Stow | OffShoot (formerly Hedge) | ShotPut Pro | Silverstack | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Paid, per seat | Paid, per seat | Paid, annual subscription |
| Platform | Mac + Windows | Mac + Windows | Mac + Windows | Mac (DIT-focused) |
| Verifies every file | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Copies to 2+ drives at once | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Clear “safe to wipe” verdict | Yes | Partial | Partial | Partial |
| Offload reports | Yes, a one-page verdict report per transfer, plus a checksum manifest | Basic | Yes, extensive | Yes |
| On-set DIT features (proxies, cascade, colour) | No | No | Some | Yes, full |
| Best for | Anyone who wants free, verified offload with a plain go/no-go answer | Solo shooters who want speed and simplicity | Productions that need thorough reporting | Full on-set DIT workflows, high-volume days |
Prices are deliberately not quoted here, as they change; check each vendor’s current pricing. The honest summary: the paid tools sit around a one-off per-seat licence, and Silverstack is a higher annual subscription aimed at professional DITs.
Where the paid tools are genuinely worth it
- ShotPut Pro – if you need to hand a client or production the fullest offload report (file manifest, timecode, codecs, a thumbnail per clip), its reporting is the most thorough. Worth paying for on productions where that paperwork matters.
- Silverstack – if you are a DIT running a full on-set cart (proxy generation, cascading transfers, colour alongside the offload), it is in a category the others are not. It is priced for professionals who need exactly that.
- OffShoot – if you want the fastest, most polished solo-shooter experience and do not mind paying for it, it is excellent and well supported.
We would rather point you to the right paid tool than pretend free beats them at everything. It does not.
Where Stow (free) is enough
If what you need is: copy the card to two drives, verify every file, and get a plain answer on whether it is safe to wipe – Stow does exactly that, on Mac and Windows, for free, with no account. For a lot of shooters, that is the whole job. The thing we focused on is the part that actually causes disasters: not “did it copy” but “can I trust the copy enough to wipe the card”. Stow only shows the green “safe to wipe” verdict when two verified copies exist on separate, independent drives. Every transfer also writes a one-page report you can send to a producer, alongside an industry-standard checksum manifest that other tools can re-verify years later.
It gets better as people use it
Stow was covered by the filmmaking press in July 2026, and the current release, 0.4.3, was built almost entirely from the comments under that coverage: per-card camera labels for A-Cam and B-Cam shoots, around 120 Sony bodies recognised out of the box, and an end to cards being suggested as “Untitled”. The full list is in the release notes, and the plain-English guide explains how the verification works.
Why a video studio gives this away free
We built it for our own crew and there was no reason to keep it to ourselves. If it saves another shooter from a wiped-card disaster, that is a good outcome, and it is an honest introduction to how we think about the craft. There is no paid tier behind it and no subscription coming. Stow is here, free, for macOS and Windows.