Workflows
Common setups
Tusk fits different work differently. The persona pages below are full guides for specific kinds of creative freelancers.
We've talked to hundreds of people who back up creative work for a living. The same five or six questions come up every time: how many drives, when to delete locally, how to label things, how to set up cloud, how to find a file from a project that finished a year ago. The answers depend on what kind of work you do.
The pages below are the long, opinionated answers, one per common kind of work. Skim the “who this is for” paragraph at the top of each page; if it sounds like you, read the rest. If not, the closest other persona is usually one click away.
Persona guides
Freelance videographer (in progress)
Mixed-client work, big H.265 and ProRes files, drives that move between bag and desk constantly.
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Quick reference: setup at a glance
The persona pages cover everything in detail. If you want the bullet version of common setups, the cards below summarize each.
Video editor
1
Point Tusk at your footage folder, or your DaVinci Resolve / Premiere project folder if you want to track project files too.
2
Add your backup SSD as a local destination and Google Drive or S3 for an offsite copy.
3
Keep working normally. When a project wraps and you want to free up space, use Delete Local in Tusk. It only allows deletion once every copy is verified.
Photographer
1
Create a project per shoot, or per client if your client volume is high.
2
Tusk can hold the catalog and the raws in the same project; both get backed up.
3
Add at least one local drive and one cloud destination so a stolen laptop never costs you a wedding gallery.
On-set ingest
1
Plug in the SD card. In Tusk, run Ingest with the source set to the card.
2
Pick at least two destinations (one local SSD, one cloud) so the offload writes to both at once.
3
Wait for verification to finish before reformatting the card. Tusk shows a clear “Done” state when every copy is checksum-verified.