How well does Version Cue play with Retrospect?

Like many (most?) designs studios, mine uses Retrospect to backup machines nightly. Does Version Cue 'play nicely' with Retrospect?

1/ Is it easy to retrieve a job off our backup tapes and straight into a selected workspace?

2/ The Version Cue information PDF notes that users should not mess with the directory structure of Version Cue – when retrieving an old project, would it be easy for studio staff to retrieve only the last versions of files in project? EG are previous versions contained in a directory called 'Old Versions' or something to that affect?

3/ If a new version of a file is in the process of being saved to a project/workspace when the backup is in progress, is the file locked to prevent backing up a partial file? In the same situation, is the current version moved to the 'previous versions' directory as soon as the new version starts being saved, or does it play it safe and only move the current (now old) version once the new version is successfully saved? I hope the later as the former would cause problems (in general and with backup/retrieval).

4/ Does Version Cue rename files when it moves them to the 'old versions' directory? If so, then Retrospect will end up needlessly backing up duplicates of files.

I would also like to know that

Thanks

Jeff

I finally had the opportunity to sit down with VC today and had mixed reactions. (Please excuse any gaps in my knowledge and the lack of extensive testing – we don't have the Creative Suite in work, and m experience was limited to a few hours on a friend's machine. With that caveat in mind...)

I really like Creative Suite. AI is fast, ID looks great (though feels strange at first). VC though is the killer app of the suite for me. As I've posted before, I've been waiting for this a long, long time (I just didn't know Adobe were working on it!).

As you may have gathered from reading the informational PDFs on Adobe.com, VC uses a database to store all files and versions of those files in Workspaces. When you open a file from a Workspace it is copied to your documents folder (specifically, the /USERNAME/Documents/Version Cue/PROJECTNAME/ folder) and opened from there. When you do a normal save operation, the local copy of the file is updated, but the copy in Version Cue is not. When you 'save a version' the file is uploaded back on to the server and the previous version kept (though marked as being an old version). (for a better, lengthier explanation see: <http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/pdfs/csversioncue.pdf> ).

Now, given that a Workspace can be used by multiple people, thus the latest versions of all files may not be cached in one place, the /Document/Version Cue/etc folder is not a suitable source for backing up. If you do so, you won't have a reliable backup set of up to date files – and you won't have prior versions either.

Looking around a bit, I found where the real files are stored (by the database):

/Applications/Adobe Version Cue/data/

Sadly, the way files are organised within the subfolders of this folder is anything but human readable. I was able to discern that projects are contained within folders designated by four digit names, for example:

/Applications/Adobe Version Cue/data/content/1001/

Digging deaper into that folder, I was able to find saved InDesign files:

/Applications/Adobe Version Cue/data/content/1001/0/0/

and saved Photoshop Files:

/Applications/Adobe Version Cue/data/content/1001/0/1/

(The test project did not include Illustrator files.) I don't know if InDesign files would always be in the .../0/ folder, or if that number is assigned to the first file type saved into the project etc.

Now, when you saved a Photoshop file, for example 'Cover.psd' into a project, a file named (for example) '2001' is created. If you save another version of the file, a new file called '2002' is created. Add a new file called 'Back Cover.psd' and it is saved to a file named '2003'. These numbered files are not simply renamed versions of the original document. They are changed in format somehow as the creator applications can not open them directly from the Finder ("Not the right kind of document").

As you can see, VC is incrementing the number as additional versions of files are added. The preceding version is not touched. This is is good for Retrospect because the same file won't be backed up more than once.

The good news ends there as far as backups are concerned I'm afraid:

The cryptic file naming makes searching Retrospect for a given file or project impossible.

I'm not sure how one would even go about re-inserting a retrieved file into a project. I'm also unsure how one could load a project back into Version Cue.

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Version Cue does include its own backup functionality but I don't think it scales well, or compares to the power, flexibility and usability of Retrospect. It allows you to backup individual projects, or an entire workspace in one go. In either case, a ZIP archive is created containing everything including file versions.

It is also possible to Export a project, though this only preserves the most recent versions of files.

Furthermore, both Exporting and Backing Up are slow compared to standard file copying and offer no real feedback other than that the operation is in progress; no % complete, no estimated time, no progress bar etc. Certainly backup up a Workspace of tens of GB would be a painful proposition.

Version Cue's setup does not prohibit Retrospect backups by any means, but at the very least it will mean some or many people will have to give up existing backup schemes and replace them with (perhaps) inferior, less flexible ones.

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To the Version Cue Team:

I don't mean to be so negative about your software. However I feel that certain design choices made with the software have hobbled an otherwise excellent product. I'm certain that the problems I started outlining above will harm adoption of VC.

I greatly look forward to seeing how VC develops. If you can offer any words to counter my points, or perhaps point out aspects I have not considered which will mitigate the backup issues I identify, I would be very interested in reading them.

regards,
Jonathan