The Hedge backup and verification software app has become OffShoot. OffShoot offers fast, verified data transfers with metadata management for offload and ingest workflows.
OffShoot goes beyond traditional backups and instead, it is a comprehensive solution that handles copying, verifying, organizing, and reporting. It guarantees your media’s security which is the most important thing.
In order to support a wider range of customers, OffShoot will be available in multiple different versions:
🌱 OffShoot Solo, custom built for iPadOS
🌱 OffShoot, the evolution of the Hedge you all know so very well
🌱 OffShoot Pro, a home for high-end features and workflows
OffShoot Solo
In the past being able to get media onto an iPad was always hindered due to the USB-2 speed of the Lightning bus. But now, thanks to iPads with Thunderbolt running iPadOS 17, and the advent of large power banks, iPads can give you offload speeds that are on par with MacBooks and NUCs.
For this very reason, OffShoot Solo has been tailor-made for iPad, and makes use of everything the hardware has to offer. You can offload to the internal SSD, to external SSDs, or to both at the same time. With Checkpoint verification technology, optimized for Apple silicon, OffShoot Solo offers a mobile workflow complete with Transfer Logs, MHLs, and XXH checksum verification.
OffShoot
The app formerly known as Hedge has been revamped with an updated user interface and app icon. So how does OffShoot differ from Hedge? Well, there are a few changes.
The first is that seats have been replaced with activations. Now, all OffShoot licenses allow you to register all your computers using a single license key, even if the license has only one activation. Your activation will float to whichever computer has OffShoot open. As soon as you activate a new computer, OffShoot allows you to move the activation to your current computer without having to leave the app.
As all computers you install OffShoot on will remember your license key, the next time you open OffShoot on one of them, it’ll automatically offer to move the activation to that machine without requiring a license key.
Seven years ago Hedge announced Connect, which was an industry-first feature that allowed you to receive a push notification on your iPhone or Watch for a transfer report.
The original Connect was iOS-only, and the second Connect installment was available for both iOS and Android, with this third generation, Connect has been brought to the cloud.
The reason for this cloud integration is that data management today is much more about collaboration. In 2021, Hedge made it possible to see live transfers from more than one computer in a single app, and now with Connect 3.0, you get a live dashboard that gives you an immediate overview of which of your computers are offloading, what they’re offloading, and how long it will take to finish.
With the rest of OffShoot not much has changed from Hedge. The only change is that you no longer need to use the now-legacy iOS and Android apps as you can simply install connect.hedge.video as a web app on the home screen of whatever type of device you’re using.
OffShoot Pro
OffShoot Pro is the high-end version of OffShoot, and it’s really only for a select number of people who need features that aren’t required by a lot of users. These features usually involve automation, integrating OffShoot into workflows and pipelines, or concern improvements for high-end cameras.
In OffShoot Pro, there is a Preset Builder that allows for much more complex presets. There is an API to automate your workflow or integrate OffShoot into a pipeline, as well as ASC MHLs, the successor of Media Hash Lists built specifically for Netflix-type workflows.
So what else does OffShoot Pro offer?
Codex & Scripting
The Codex copy engine that was built with X2X, the owner of Codex, has very specific features tailored to Codex’s way of working with media. The RAW data stream coming from an ARRI camera is so high that the overhead of using a file system to store that data on an SSD is too much. That’s why Codex records the data stream direct-to-disk, only to reconstruct a virtual file system when mounting the drive. Because virtualized file systems are relatively slow to generate they are too slow for OffShoot’s indexing technology, so the Codex copy engine has specific guard rails and safety switches built in.
With the release of Codex Device Manager 7, which is required for the ARRI ALEXA 35, the Codex engine has been moved into OffShoot Pro.
With OffShoot Pro, you’ll not only gain Scripting and Codex support, but also Pro Presets, the API, and another new Pro feature, S3 transfers.
Cloud Destinations
Consumer cloud drives like Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, are all slow, have massive latency, and have usage caps. That doesn’t cut it for serious workloads, and you ned something like S3.
With S3, files are not stored in a file system but in object storage. With object storage, files are accessed via an API. Amazon was among the first to bring object storage to the cloud in 2006. 99% of cloud services are built using S3.
S3 is a straightforward and economical way to store and access files in the cloud and has become synonymous with object storage. S3 is arguably the de facto standard to access professional cloud storage, just like a file system is the de facto standard to access files on a hard drive.
Cloud drives do not offer the verification level you’re used to getting with local storage as they all use a local cache to store media, which then gets verified. S3 supports verification, but not in the same way as local storage like SSD, NAS, and RAID. Due to S3’s multi-part nature, checksums work very differently. With S3, each file is chopped up, and each part is checksummed.
Together with Amazon AWS, they have engineered a way to be able to cross-verify server-side multipart checksums with locally generated file checksums. That’s essential for professional 3-2-1 workflows described by Netflix in their Data Management brief.
It is now possible to use standard off-the-shelf S3 without the typical caveats of cloud storage. OffShoot Pro lets you interact with S3 like a hard disk.
OffShoot Pro allows you to browse a bucket (a bucket is like a disk partition, but on S3) without immediately accessing the data like Finder does. A bit akin to how LTO works, OffShoot Pro allows you to browse your cloud storage, and only when transferring does it actually add to the bucket. All changes are solely done utilizing Amazon’s official S3 APIs, to ensure full data integrity.
With OffShoot Pro’s native Amazon S3 integration, productions can now get their media into the cloud in a safe, verified, and affordable way.
Paired with EditReady’s transcoding power, OffShoot Pro offers a fantastic way to quickly offload OCF locally, create proxies, and push those to S3 for editorial.
ASC MHL
Another big feature in OffShoot Pro that hasn’t gotten much attention is ASC MHL. The successor of the original Media Hash List was created by the ASC together with a committee of industry representatives like Netflix and software vendors. It focuses on creating a paper trail of media, copies, and checksums.
ASC-MHL is not for everyone, so Media Hash Lists remain available in both OffShoot and OffShoot Pro.
Connect Pro
Connect has a new additional feature for Pro users. With OffShoot Pro, you don’t have to fetch each device’s Connect Code, as all transfers are done with OffShoot Pro are automatically synced with Connect. You can use your email or license key instead of logging into your Connect dashboard with a Connect Code. You’ll see all devices registered to your license key in the online Connect dashboard.
This feature is perfect for data handlers and media managers who work with multiple teams or locations and need to keep tabs on all media that is being offloaded. Built together with ENVY’s London-based DIT department CAPTURE, Connect Pro provides a missing link in many workflows.
Upgrades & Updates
Every Hedge license that is eligible for updates after October 1st, automatically rolls over into an OffShoot license. Your license key stays the same, just install the update that will be made available in the app and have your license key at hand so you can register your computer for Floating if needed.
To celebrate the launch of OffShoot, and OffShoot Pro, a deal is available to everyone to upgrade their license to Pro. Every Hedge license owner will receive an email with a custom link to a special checkout for whatever is applicable to your license, updating to OffShoot, upgrading to Pro, extending your license, or all of the above.
Pricing
Above you can see how much the different versions cost. You can also do a 10-day free trial.
