OffShoot (formerly Hedge) is one of the most established names in card offloading — used on productions that need ASC MHL manifests and branded delivery reports. ShotGrab is newer, Mac-only, and built for a narrower job: solo shooters and small crews who want to arm a project once and keep working while cards keep arriving. Neither is "the" answer. Here's an honest look at where each one actually wins.
Side by side
| ShotGrab | OffShoot | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | macOS 13+ only | macOS and Windows |
| Price | €5 pass (30 days) · €29/yr · €39 lifetime (launch price until 30 Nov 2026, then €69) | $169 Standard · $249 Pro · $49 / 30-day rental |
| Free tier | 128GB every 14 days, every feature unlocked, no time limit | 10-day fully-functional trial, then paid |
| Verification | SHA-256 while copying (single read of the card) | Source + destination checksums, legacy hashes, ASC MHL |
| Multiple destinations | Cascade to any number of secondaries, verified against the written primary copy | Cascading transfers to multiple destinations (Pro tier) |
| Organization | Automatic subfolders by date / camera / client, same template every time | Manual filter, rename and organize per session; ingest browser for mixed cards |
| Workflow | Arm a project once, every following card imports on its own | Configured per offload session |
| Reports | None yet | Branded PDF / HTML reports with metadata, timecode |
| Duplicate handling | Per-project dedup key (name, size, capture date, camera) | Duplicate detection to resume interrupted transfers |
Where OffShoot wins
If your production runs Windows machines, ShotGrab simply isn't an option — OffShoot is cross-platform and ShotGrab is Mac-only by design. If a client or studio requires ASC MHL manifests or a branded PDF report to hand over with the drive, OffShoot already speaks that language and ShotGrab doesn't have an answer for it today. Its ingest browser and per-session rename/organize rules also give a DIT more manual control when a card genuinely needs sorting by hand — heterogeneous media from a rental house, say, where no fixed template fits.
Where ShotGrab wins
Price is the obvious one: a ShotGrab lifetime license costs less than a single 30-day OffShoot rental, and the free tier is a real 128GB every two weeks with nothing disabled — not a 10-day countdown. The bigger difference for a solo shooter or a two-person crew is the workflow itself: ShotGrab is armed once per project, and every card that follows gets recognized, copied, verified and ejected without you touching a dialog — which matters most on exactly the kind of multi-camera, live-editing day this comparison exists because of. Folders are also organized automatically from a template you set up once, instead of being configured session by session.
Who should pick which
Solo shooters and small crews on Mac
Weddings, events, run-and-gun multicam days — anyone who wants to set a destination once and keep shooting or editing while cards keep coming in, on a budget that doesn't need a studio's approval.
DIT teams and cross-platform sets
Productions that need Windows support, ASC MHL compliance, or a branded report to hand over with every drive — and where a DIT is configuring the offload by hand anyway.