A gentle introduction to rsync, a free, powerful tool for media ingest

It strikes me that many media professionals and filmmakers don’t use rsync, the free and open-source command-line utility available across Mac, Linux, and Windows. It’s a powerful, fast, lightweight, and mature tool that’s perfect not only for simple one-off media ingests, but also for complicated transfers involving many camera cards or hard drives. It can even be automated for reliable, efficient backups. Though it’s most commonly used by IT professionals, it’s highly relevant for filmmakers. DITs, data wranglers, and post-production professionals of all kinds will find it invaluable. Admittedly, the learning curve for rsync may be much steeper than that of other professional media ingest applications that have GUIs, but proficiency with rsync feels like a superpower.

What is rsync and why would I use it?

Arri’s “Data Management” page describes rsync:

Rsync is a free terminal application. It requires a computer expert to run a verified data transfer and even then, is rather cumbersome to use. If it is not already installed on your computer, you can find it at http://rsync.samba.org.

As far as I can tell, rsync remains superior to pretty much every other professional application for media ingest, like Imagine Products ShotPut Pro, Red Giant Offload, DaVinci Resolve’s Clone Tool, Pomfort Silverstack, or CopyToN. Each of these applications are great in their own rights, and they deliver what…