A Professional Tape Drive For $60? Continued
The functional principle looks like this: The camcorder is connected by FireWire (IEEE1394) to a PC or notebook of your choice. The software controls the DV camcorder to record (backup) and play (restore) - similar to a traditional video-editing program. The DV video format merely serves as a sort of container, since any number of files and directories can be written to tape. In any case, from a purely technical point of view, it doesn't make any difference what sort of data is written to DV. When saving, DV Streamer PRO writes a special header on the tape that contains data size, start and end time and directory structure.
The software takes over complete control of the camera
The manufacturer claims that up to 15 GB of data can fit on one 60-minute tape. That does not hold true in practice, however
You need a PC system with FireWire interface before you can transfer any data