Transfer Blackmagic Camera footage from your iPhone to your Mac over USB

You recorded with Blackmagic Camera on your iPhone, and the clips are not in Photos. They sit in the app’s own storage, so a normal photo import never sees them, and you still need those files on your Mac.

I shoot with Blackmagic Camera on an iPhone 16 Pro. The app can save each clip straight to the photo library, but that setting never worked for me, so the clips stayed in the app. Saving them to Photos by hand was worse. Nothing told me the export had finished, the phone locked in the middle of it, and I could not tell whether the file had arrived.

Footage Ferry copies those clips over a USB cable. You get a thumbnail for each one, you can play a clip before you copy it, and a file counts as imported only when the copy on the Mac matches the file on the iPhone. Then you choose whether to delete the originals.

If you record on an iPhone already, my video recording setup is the older desk rig, and for cinematic-mode clips I just AirDropped the file. This is the USB path for Blackmagic Camera’s own library. The first time I used it, that library was 69 clips and about 15 GB.

What you need

Footage Ferry runs on macOS 15 Sequoia or later, on Apple silicon and Intel. After purchasing it, connect GitHub in Polar, accept the private repository invitation, and download the zip from Releases. Unzip it and drag Footage Ferry to your Applications folder. It’s signed with my Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Confirm Open if macOS asks the first time you launch it.

You need a USB cable between the iPhone and the Mac. Wi-Fi is not used for the transfer. Unlock the iPhone and tap Trust if it asks whether to trust this computer.

You don’t need Xcode. The app talks to the phone through MobileDevice, a private framework that ships with macOS, the same one the Finder uses to see an iPhone. It only reads clips Blackmagic Camera keeps in its own storage. Clips it already saved to Photos, or to an external drive, don’t show up.

Footage Ferry is my project. It isn’t made by, affiliated with, or endorsed by Blackmagic Design.

Look at the clips before you copy

Plug the iPhone in. When the connection is ready, you should see the clips with thumbnails, recording dates and file sizes. Click a column heading to sort by name, recording date or size.

On the iPhone, the Files app shows the same clips in the Blackmagic Camera folder under On My iPhone. Footage Ferry reads that folder over USB.

Play anything you’re unsure about before you copy it. Select the clip and press Space, or double-click it. It plays straight from the iPhone, and nothing is written to the Mac while you watch.

Blackmagic Camera puts each clip’s index at the end of the file, so a thumbnail can read that index and one frame instead of the whole video. A thumbnail of my largest clip, 1.4 GB, reads about 4 MB. The thumbnails are cached on the Mac, so the list fills in faster the next time you connect.

Copy the clips you want

Say you recorded three takes and you only want the last two. Use your own clips. The three takes are just the shape of the job.

Preview the first take, close it, and select the two you want. If the destination isn’t the one you want, click Choose Folder…. The default folder is ~/Movies/Blackmagic Camera. Then click the toolbar button that imports the selection.

Import All copies every clip in the list. Show in Finder opens the destination folder.

The progress view shows the current file, the transfer speed and the time remaining. Footage Ferry keeps the Mac awake during the import. Leave the cable connected until that view finishes.

The cable decides the speed. With a USB 2 cable, my imports run at about 40 MB/s. The 15 Pro and later Pro iPhones support USB 3, up to 10 Gb/s. When one of those phones is connected at USB 2 speed, the app says so at the bottom of the window.

Know when a copy is actually done

Finder can show a filename before the check has finished. Footage Ferry copies each clip into a hidden temporary file and flushes that file to disk. It then reads the file back with the cache turned off and computes a SHA-1 hash.

The iPhone computes a hash of the same file from its own storage. The file protocol the Finder uses has an operation for that, and it takes about a second per gigabyte, so the check doesn’t download the clip again. The copy gets the clip’s real name and its recording date only when the two hashes match. If they don’t, the copy is thrown away.

The app never overwrites a file. A clip already in the folder is checked instead of copied again. If a different file already has that name, the new copy gets a new name, like A001_02211024_C001 2.mov.

Decide what happens to the originals

When the import finishes, the app asks whether to remove the imported clips from the iPhone. Keep on iPhone is the default button, so pressing Return does not delete anything.

If you click Delete from iPhone, the app runs the check again immediately before it deletes each clip. The copy has to still be there, with the same size as the iPhone’s file and the same hash. If anything doesn’t match, that clip stays on the iPhone and an alert tells you why.

Deleting frees space on the phone. It is a separate step from the import, so you can finish the transfer and keep every original. The hash proves the bytes match. Play the footage you care about, and keep a backup, before that original is the one you throw away.

If something looks wrong

If the list is empty, the clips are probably in Photos or on an external drive, which this importer doesn’t read. Reconnect the USB cable, unlock the iPhone, and finish the trust prompt. Read the connection message in the app before you start another import.

If the transfer is slow, check the cable, the hub and the port on the Mac. A Pro iPhone can still be stuck at USB 2 because of the cable, and the window tells you when it sees that.

If the destination disk runs out of space, or a transfer fails, keep the originals and fix that first. Don’t delete a clip because its name appeared in Finder. Wait until that clip shows a verified import.

If a macOS update breaks the connection, check the release notes in the private repository. MobileDevice can change, which is also why the app can’t be on the Mac App Store. Download updates from the private Releases page, and quit Footage Ferry before you replace it. Thumbnail caches live under ~/Library/Caches/com.flaviocopes.blackmagic-cam-importer. Those are previews, not your imported videos.

Get Footage Ferry

Import Blackmagic Camera clips from your iPhone over USB. Preview videos, verify every copy and choose when to delete the originals.

See Footage Ferry → · $20 including tax, with full source code.

More tutorials for my apps →

Want me to talk about your product? You can sponsor this site.