Importing camera cards in Video by Zaweba

Camera cards are not simple folders of videos. Professional and consumer cameras alike scatter each recording across several files and folders, with clip details in one place, picture in another and sound somewhere else. Copying the obvious-looking files often loses the parts that make a clip whole. Video by Zaweba reads the card's own layout so you get proper clips.

What it recognises

File > Import a camera card recognises Panasonic P2, Canon XF, Sony XDCAM and XAVC, AVCHD and DCIM folders. Between them those cover a broad spread of video cameras, camcorders and the DCIM layout used by many stills cameras and phones that also shoot video.

Point it at the card, or at a full copy of the card on your drive, and the clips come in as clips rather than loose pieces.

Ingest settings: copying safely

Reading straight from a card is fine for a quick look, but cards get reused and wiped. Ingest settings can copy the imported files into a media folder as part of the import. Each copy is checked with SHA-256, a checksum that confirms the copy matches the original exactly. If a byte went wrong along the way, you will know before the card is formatted.

That check is the reason to use ingest rather than dragging files in the file browser. A plain copy can fail quietly; a checked copy tells you.

Converting while you copy

Ingest can also convert as it copies, to ProRes 422 or DNxHR HQ. Camera formats are built for recording, often compressing heavily so that a lot fits on a card, and some can be heavy to edit on a modest computer. Converting to an editing format at the start makes playback lighter for the rest of the job, at the cost of time and much more disk space.

Whether to convert depends on your machine and your footage. If clips play smoothly as they are, skip it and save the space. If the timeline stutters on camera files, converting at ingest can make the whole edit more pleasant.

A routine for every shoot

Set up a media folder per project, named so you can find it later. Import each card through File > Import a camera card with copying turned on. Wait for the checks to finish. Only then put the card back in the camera to be formatted.

Keep a second copy of the media folder on another drive as soon as you can. A checked copy guards against a bad transfer; it does not guard against a drive failing next month.

Card habits to break

Do not copy only the video files out of a card's folders and throw the rest away. Do not format a card before the checked copy has finished. And do not rename or move files inside a card copy, since the card's structure is what lets the app put the clips together.

Once media is in, the Files and Metadata tabs help you browse and log it, and the Project manager gathers it up at the end. Camera card import is the first step of that chain in Video by Zaweba, and it is worth doing carefully every time.