Offload cards

Offload copies the cards from a wedding onto your drive, verifies every file as it lands, writes a report next to the footage, and offers to start the edit from the copy. Use it the night of the wedding, with every card and reader you have plugged in.

Start an offload

You can reach the offload screen three ways:

1. On the Edit launchpad, click Offload footage.
2. Insert a card anywhere in Hailo and click the Card detected toast (see The card-detected toast).
3. Click an Offloading now tile on the launchpad to return to a copy already running.

The screen walks through four steps: whose wedding, where it goes, which cards, then the copy itself.

Step 1: Whose wedding is this?

Pick the couple the cards belong to. Hailo puts its best guess first (the nearest upcoming or most recent wedding), then the rest of your couples. Type in Search couples to filter.

If the couple is not in Hailo yet, click Add a new couple. Under New couple, fill in Partner one, Partner two and the Wedding date, then click Create couple. The couple is created in Manage as well, so they exist across all three wings.

If you leave both names empty, Hailo says "Give at least one partner a name." The button briefly reads Creating… while the couple is saved.

Step 2: Choose the destination

The destination line reads as a path: the drive, then the wedding folder, then the card folders Hailo will create inside it.

1. Click Choose drive and pick the drive (or folder) the footage should land on. The button reads Pick a drive until you do.
2. The wedding folder is named after the couple. Edit the folder name if you want something different. A date chip shows the wedding date.
3. Click Continue. It stays disabled until a drive is picked.

The note under the path says it plainly: "Hailo makes this folder for you. Cards are only read, never changed."

Different couple takes you back to step 1.

Messages on this step

• "The native folder dialog only works in the installed app" followed by a prompt to type the destination path and press Return: you are not in the desktop app. Type the path into the field instead.
• "That's the destination" followed by a prompt to pick the source you are copying from: you pointed the source picker at the drive you chose as the destination. Pick the card instead.

Step 3: Cards

Under Available cards to offload, every card reader Hailo can see gets a row. Hailo recognizes a card by its camera folder layout (a DCIM, PRIVATE or similar camera folder at the top level), so a plain SSD full of files does not appear here on its own; see Card not showing up? for that case.

Each row asks a few things about the card.

Field	What to do
Which camera was this?	Tap a role: A-Cam, B-Cam, C-Cam, D-Cam, Drone, Audio, Gimbal or Other. The role names the folder the card lands in.
Folder name	The folder the card is copied into, inside the wedding folder. It fills in from the role; tap a preset or type your own.
Folders to copy	A tick list of the card's top-level folders (loose files at the root show as (root)). Open a folder to drill in. Everything is ticked by default.
Tag what's on it (optional)	Tags for the folder: Highlight clips, Long-form ceremony, Long-form speeches, Long-form first dances, Drone, Lav mic, Wireless mic, Recorder. Tags help the intake step label folders later.

Then click Offload this card. On a card with several folders you can also choose Offload everything or Choose folders first… to untick some before the copy starts. The button explains itself when it is disabled: "Pick a drive first" or "Pick a camera above".

Recognized and Empty card badges

• Recognized: Hailo has seen this exact card before and remembers what it was last time. The row shows the remembered role and the wedding it was used on, with the line "Offload straight in, or change it." Change the role if this card played a different part today.
• Empty card: the card has no footage on it. Nothing to copy.

Card not showing up?

Click Card not showing up? Add a folder or SSD. A path field appears: type or paste the path to the volume or folder (for example /Volumes/YourCardOrSSD) and click Add, or click Browse… to pick it. The volume then gets a row like any other card. This is also how you offload from an SSD recorder or a folder someone already copied for you.

View copy progress appears once a copy is running, so you can return to the copy screen from here.

Step 4: The copy screen

Once a card starts, the copy screen shows a card graphic with a live percent, the card's name and a status line, a beam of files flowing to a drive graphic that reads N GB landed, and a verified stamp once every file on the card has been checked.

Under it, a per-file list shows each file's state as it is queued, copied and verified. Every file is written to a temporary name, re-read and checked against the original, and only then given its final name. If a file with the same name already exists on the destination, Hailo compares the two: an identical file counts as already offloaded and nothing is written; a different file is saved with a " (2)" suffix.

Got another card?

Pull the finished card, insert the next one, and it appears in the list on this screen with the line "Got another card? Insert it and it'll appear here." Set its role and start it; several cards copy at once. You can also click Add another card to go back to the cards step.

Finish offload

Finish offload stays disabled until every card in the session has been copied and verified. Click it to write the report and move to the Done screen.

Messages on this screen: "Could not start:" followed by the reason (the copy never began) and "Finish failed:" followed by the reason (the report could not be written). Both leave what has been copied in place.

What is never copied

Hailo skips the things you would not want in a wedding folder:

• the low-resolution files some cameras write beside the real media,
• system files and hidden housekeeping folders (.DS_Store, .Trashes, Spotlight and volume-info folders and the like),
• any earlier Hailo output folder found on a card.

Everything else in the folders you ticked is copied.

Done

The Done screen summarizes the session, headed All files verified (or Offload finished when a file had an issue), then the line "Report saved next to the footage · your cards were not modified". The report is a file named Hailo Offload Report in the wedding folder listing every file, its size and its verification result.

Two doors follow:

• Start the edit: "Drive it yourself." Opens the intake flow on the freshly copied folder, with the couple already chosen. See Add footage to a project.
• Let Hailo build it: "Pick what to make. Come back to finished films." Opens the build sheet right here, the same one described in Build Everything.

Or click Edit later to close. The footage stays where it is, and the launchpad shows a Footage offloaded tile for the couple so you can come back to it.

What happens elsewhere in Hailo

• When the session finishes, a notification lands in Hailo's bell titled {couple} offload complete, with a body like "4 cards · 812 GB · verified". If any file had a problem, the body says how many and points you to the offload report.
• The couple's Edit hub lists every offloaded folder under Footage, each with Reveal in Finder.
• Next time you add footage for this couple, the intake screen offers the offloaded folders for a one-click start.
• Hailo remembers each card, so next time it appears as Recognized with its last role filled in.

The card-detected toast

Insert a card while Hailo is open on any wing and a toast appears in the corner: Card detected, "Start an offload?". Click it to open the offload screen; click the X to dismiss it. Hailo shows it once per card and not while the offload screen is already open.

If it didn't work

"Not enough room on {drive}": Hailo checks free space before writing a single byte. The message spells out the numbers: the size of this card, how much is still being written by other cards in this session, the headroom Hailo keeps spare (at least 512 MB, or one percent of the card), what the total comes to, and how much is actually free. It ends with "Free up space or pick another drive; nothing has been copied." Do one of those and start the card again.

The card is not listed. Use Card not showing up? Add a folder or SSD and add it by path. See also Card not detected.

A file shows an issue. The offload report names it. The original is still on the card, untouched; copy that file by hand or run the card again (files already verified are skipped, not rewritten).

The copy screen is empty after relaunching Hailo. The session is still recorded; click the Offloading now or Footage offloaded tile on the launchpad to see where it got to.