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Quickest Way To Transfer SD Card Footage To Mac?

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phildavies79

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 27, 2011
11
0
Recently bought a new iMac (27 inch, 3.1 GHz) and only realised after the fact it had no USB 3.0 ports (just USB 2.0 and thunderbolt)...

I'm transferring footage from my SD cards via the card slot on the Mac and wondered if getting a USB 2.0 card reader would speed data transfer up... compared to the built in slot?

Any news on whether there will be thunderbolt card readers anytime soon? Can't believe Apple decided to leave out USB 3.0 ports on their 2011 machines!!
 
Just stick with using the built-in iMac slot reader, really the fastest option for now until the media speed gets faster.
 
It is absolutely not true that card speed is the limiting factor. The fastest cards from Lexar and Sandisk are limited by the readers.
 
slimenta said:
The fastest cards from Lexar and Sandisk are limited by the readers.
Click to expand...
All I can see on Lexar's site are 20 MB/s speed cards. This is 160 mbps which is well within the capability of USB 2, let alone faster interfaces available now.

Do they have something else?
 
Faster to unload video from SD cards

I have 3 HD cameras recording to 64GB cards, filling them up several times for each weekend event. (I have more than a dozen cards, so needing to empty the card for the next session is not the issue.)

It takes 20-30 minutes to unload each full card. That is an hour and a half and I would prefer a faster method, especially at the end of the event when I am breaking down the equipment while I monitor moving the video to the backup drives. I heard about a NAS drive that comes with an SD card reader, which would be even better, I wouldn't have to dedicate a computer to this copying process. Any ideas?
 
This might be helpful to some of you (but not those who are filling up big cards with completely new video and thus needing to backup entire cards after each shoot): get Chronosync. It will make it easy to sync just the "what's changed" stuff since the last sync. Thus, you shoot some stuff, sync, then shoot some other stuff on the same card and the next sync will shortcut the archiving process by only copying over the latest stuff shot. This is much faster than just copying a whole (big) card full of video each time. It works really well for me (big hard drive camcorder that sometimes takes a few months to completely fill though I shoot lots of events over those few months).
 
You use AND fill 64gig cards? What kind of camera are you using and what codec? Also I never use anything more than 16GB or even 8GB's...you loose that card/break it/accidently format it/ect. and your screwed!! My MacBook Pro's card reader is rated at 480mbps, same as USB 2.0....it probably never reaches this and my cards are under that speed BUT I do use Sandisk Ultra's and Extreme Pro's.
 
nateo200 said:
You use AND fill 64gig cards? What kind of camera are you using and what codec?
Click to expand...
64 GB is "nothing" for digital video.

nateo200 said:
Also I never use anything more than 16GB or even 8GB's...you loose that card/break it/accidently format it/ect. and your screwed!
Click to expand...
LOL. How can you lose the SD card? Make backups, if possible, and save the backups on a third disk (i and many others deleted backups, because we thought we do not need the content). So a second backup is a good idea.

nateo200 said:
I do use Sandisk Ultra's and Extreme Pro's.
Click to expand...
Good choice. Impressive quality.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
64 GB is "nothing" for digital video.
Well if your shooting on a RED Epic with 1:3 REDCODE and 4 channels of Uncompressed PCM then its belly button lint! Thats why I asked what kind of camera he was using and what codec! If he's using your average Sony AVCHD camera or whatever 64GB's can get you allot, he he's using a Phantom 65 well then he better start looking at solid state hard drives! :O

LOL. How can you lose the SD card? Make backups, if possible, and save the backups on a third disk (i and many others deleted backups, because we thought we do not need the content). So a second backup is a good idea.

Of course not! But S*** happens! Everyone I talk to that shoots on lower bit rate cameras suggests this (and by lower bit rate I'm talking AVCHD type). I learned to make back ups of my back ups a long time ago after data loss of some important things....

Good choice. Impressive quality.
Assuming your not be sarcastic... I love my Sandisk's! They seam to handle a constant flow of video/audio and I never have buffer issues...I've used PNY Proffesional series and they go up and down on the bit rate in tests and need to be reformatted wayyy to much...even the label is worn off completely! My Sandisk's never cut out...I buy them exclusively even if some other brand is cheaper...Regardless of if you were being sarcastic or not would you say they are top for SD card quality? Ill put down cash on the best storage...
Click to expand...

read the bold
 
nateo200 said:
You use AND fill 64gig cards? What kind of camera are you using and what codec? Also I never use anything more than 16GB or even 8GB's...you loose that card/break it/accidently format it/ect. and your screwed!! My MacBook Pro's card reader is rated at 480mbps, same as USB 2.0....it probably never reaches this and my cards are under that speed BUT I do use Sandisk Ultra's and Extreme Pro's.
Click to expand...

Yep, 6hrs of HD video, been using 3 Canon XA10's since they came out, more than a year, I think. I hand carry the cards when I swap them out, have heavy duty Pelican SD card holders, and I back them up before I leave the room at the end of the event. Rather than loss, I am concerned these cards will wear out eventually, so I rotate in new ones. That's why I have 3 cameras, if one camera's session was lost completely I'd still have two other video recordings, as well as 2 audio recordings on macs. Anyway, I want to be able to unload these cards more quickly if there is a way, slows down my breakdown process cuz I have to monitor the backup process while packing my equipment.
 
Terryc23 said:
Yep, 6hrs of HD video, been using 3 Canon XA10's since they came out, more than a year, I think. I hand carry the cards when I swap them out, have heavy duty Pelican SD card holders, and I back them up before I leave the room at the end of the event. Rather than loss, I am concerned these cards will wear out eventually, so I rotate in new ones. That's why I have 3 cameras, if one camera's session was lost completely I'd still have two other video recordings, as well as 2 audio recordings on macs. Anyway, I want to be able to unload these cards more quickly if there is a way, slows down my breakdown process cuz I have to monitor the backup process while packing my equipment.
Click to expand...

Ah well you seam to be very conscious of data protection! I've just heard horror story's of 64GB SD cards getting lost. I'm currently transcoding 64gigs of AVCHD to edit....
 
HELP PLZ ! need to transfer date & time from SD card to disk

Have Imac & Macbook Pro.... doing video, 10+ hrs per day. Video possibly will end up in court for video evidence....

I can put SD card in my Imac, pull up video, but the time & date is not there....
Also when played in idvd/imovie, as you scroll over the video, the time & date is present, but not on the video that is actually playing and will be burned to a disk.

It is paramount that the time & date is there. I went to an all mac environment because of reputation and quality.... now it seems my simple, obsolete Toshiba Sattelite is doing things my Macs can't.

Please help ! Any suggestions happily accepted !

Thank you !
 
Check your camera's settings. On some cameras, it is possible to turn on the time/date stamp to be recorded over the image as part of the video. We just got Panasonic AG-AC130As at work, and there is a menu setting to do just that.
 
JasonA said:
Check your camera's settings. On some cameras, it is possible to turn on the time/date stamp to be recorded over the image as part of the video. We just got Panasonic AG-AC130As at work, and there is a menu setting to do just that.
Click to expand...

Also, if the camera records into AVCHD (and not plain MOV files), it's possible the AVCHD files also have a timestamp track. These tracks are rendered by, say, VLC and special attention must be paid to preserve them during remuxing / importing to video editors.

What's the model of the camera?
 
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