DV Backup 1.4.1 review

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DV Backup allows you to use your digital camcorder to backup hard disk data.

License: Shareware
OS: Mac OS X
File size: 686K
Developer: Tim Hewett
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Price: $50.00
Updated: 04 Jul 2005
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DV Backup allows you to use your digital camcorder to backup hard disk data. Just select the archive (made by e.g. Stuffit, Disk Copy etc) and DV Backup does the rest. Capacity is 5GB per hour of DV tape (10GB if no error recovery is needed). Note - also works with Digital8 camcorders. Compatible with PAL and NTSC devices.

Here are some key features of "DV Backup":
backup, restore, verify with up to 10GB storage per hour of tape (15GB for LP mode), with the capability to backup over unlimited multiple tapes
option of incremental and compressed backups
full table-of-contents listing for each tape including user comments
unattended scheduled backups feature
automatic remote control of the camera including tape positioning
8 levels of error protection/recovery, from none through to full duplication
file/folder archive during backup, de-archive during restore
PAL and NTSC, DV, Digital8 and DVCAM devices supported
drag-and-drop functionality
support for restoring backups made by DV Backup 0.2.

Limitations:
DV Backup can be evaluated without charge - backups of up to 1GB are supported for the first backup on each tape, and two further backups of up to 50MB each can be added to each tape.

What's New:
New Features:
support for Tiger, MacOS 10.4.
a new slide-out file selection drawer has been added to the backup selection list window: when selecting files to backup and supervisor authorisation has been provided, it allows you choose files which normally would be inaccessible. It is also possible to descend into inaccessible folders in the backup selection list, again if authorisation is enabled. Previously the standard Cocoa open panel was used to add in these files, which was unable to view restricted folders regardless of the authorisation status.
the new slide-out drawer also shows all files and folder, including hidden ones (e.g. folders like /etc, /var, .Trashes etc.) - previously the Cocoa open panel filtered them out and there was no ability to override this.
the slide-out drawer also adds the ability to drag-and-drop files from it to the backup file list, as if being dragged from a Finder window.
it is now possible to reset a backup set's incremental backup status - once reset the next incremental backup will backup all files in the set regardless of whether they have changed since the previous incremental backup.

Fixes/improvements:
certain DV devices cannot eject the tape without first being disconnected from the Firewire bus (mainly those connecting to Firewire via a docking station). This caused problems when a new tape was being requested as part of a multitape backup/restore/verify operation as DV Backup was unable to cope with the device being disconnected while the new tape was being inserted. This has been resolved.
certain DV devices cannot enter "player" or "play/edit" mode without first entering "camera mode" due to the arrangement of the switch. DV Backup requires "player" or "play/edit" mode and entering "camera" mode first can cause problems. This has been resolved.
certain front loading JVC VCR/deck devices indicate that a tape is present as soon as it has been pushed in, but do not respond to tape transport commands until the tape has settled a few seconds later. This caused problems with loading the table of contents especially for multitape backups. This has now been resolved by allowing a delay to be specified when a new tape is detected.
the DV data buffer is now held entirely in RAM and no longer uses disk space.
backward compatibility with backups made using the early beta releases (v0.1, v0.2 etc.), which used a different recording format, has been restored.
fix of a problem affecting the way incremental backup file lists are processed.
the verify log file has been improved to only show files which caused a verify error, and what the error was.
many other enhancements and fixes.

Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.2 or later
DV video recorder.

DV Backup 1.4.1 keywords