Hello ALL,
Just wanted to share this work around i found, i wanted to purchase a multi card reader for my Sony XD Cam, but it was a bit out of the budget, so i went looking for a cheeper set up. I found on ebay a 4 x usb hub and 4 x USB to SD card adaptors, i think $22.00 AU all up.

Now you can open all 4 card and copie them to a backup folder. Done. But !! If you wanted to go the next step read on,

I downloaded a copy of the shotput pro software and hey presto it all works. Speed is equal to coping one card as it is to coping 4 cards at once.

I have posted this to help the people that are on a budget.

Rob.

I downloaded a copy of the shotput pro software and hey presto it all works. Speed is equal to coping one card as it is to coping 4 cards at once.

Rob.

Are you saying that the data transfer for all four cards at the same time is equal to just transfering data from one card, or do you mean the data transfer per card equals that of a single card reader.

I can't see how all four streams of data will transfer at the same time as the USB port has its limitations. If this is the case then what is the advantage other than being able to load up four cards at a time, which I cant see the point of doing.

the data transfer rate from either the card or the reader is probably way lower than the usb bandwith available . so it would be no suprise if 4 card readers are able to transfer at full speed in the same time.

Actually e-films announced a similar product last month. It ingests several cards in the time it takes one card (not sequential loading) http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-xdcam-ex-cinealta/240131-e-films-australia-releases-e-mcr-mulitple-card-reader.html

I think the key to the simultaneous downloading on MAC platform (intel chip ) is using the latest version of Shotput Pro.

"Prior versions of Shot Put Pro™ utilized multi-threading techniques to copy HD Memory cards to multiple destinations in parallel." said Dan Montgomery, President of Imagine Products, Inc. "The newest Shot Put Pro™ now takes that a step further by simultaneously copying multiple files within each memory card's contents to multiple destinations on multi-core processor Macintosh computers. The result is speed improvements of 20-40% faster copy times."

Unfortunately for me, I have not been able to test this as I still use the earlier version of Shotput pro on an older Mac Powerbook (ppc) .