Copying video

Here's where Carbon Copy Cloner (hereafter called CCC) comes in. I'm not importing video into Final Cut Pro X while on the road. I don't have time to edit and I'll hand all this off to my editor when I get home, so all I need to do is copy the files off the memory card. Note that this is only giving me two copies (what's on my external drive and the files left behind on the SD card), so I absolutely could and should be running a second backup. As I write this, I realize that I do have the space for that and will do it as soon as I'm done writing this article :-)

To copy the video files and ignore the stills, I created a Task which uses a Custom Filter to copy only video files from the SD card to my external hard drive. You can set these Tasks to run automatically when the drive(s) appear, or on a schedule, or manually. I have it set to happen when the drives appear (meaning both the SD card and my external hard drive have to be present), so if they are both plugged in this happens before the Importing Photos step detailed above. It doesn't matter which comes first.

Here's what one of the CCC Tasks looks like. I have to create one of these for each SD card, as it sees each as a unique drive (even though they have the same name — this is a good thing). You see a list of my backup Tasks (1), and the selected Task is to backup video files from my SD card #1, which I'm using in the GX85.

Under the Source (2) you see the camera memory card, and in Destination (3) you see the backup folder on my external hard drive. This folder has been given an extremely obvious name; “BACKUP SD1 GX85 video files Oaxaca”. Then under the Clone (4) option, it's set to Custom. At first glance, it looks like I've only designated the DCIM folder to be copied (this is the folder LUMIX cameras create to store the image files, and deselecting the others keeps me from having those empty folders in my backup). However next to that Custom option is a small magnifying glass (5), and this is where the real magic happens.

Carbon Copy Cloner configuration to copy video files from SD card

When you click on the magnifying glass, you can include or exclude files by criteria such as file type. Here I've chosen to include (+) movie files of both .MOV and .MP4 format, and to exclude (–) picture files of .JPG and .RW2 format.

The Carbon Copy Cloner Custom Filter menu lets you determine exactly what will and won’t be copied

That's really all there is to it. Now when I connect both the SD card and my external hard drive, all movie files (and no photo files) will be copied to my backup destination.

(Next, see how to automatically backup the all-important photos and Lightroom catalog)