How to Backup VisualHub

I recently archived and reformatted my Mac so I could do a clean install of Snow Leopard, as a result I wanted to reinstall some of the apps I used to use, one of which was VisualHub, a video conversion tool that unfortunately is no longer developed — yes I know there are plenty of other apps out there, but VisualHub works perfectly with my current setup/workflow.

After copying the app and finding my serial, I discovered it needed to download a conversion engine before it could work, but for some reason it couldn’t or wouldn’t download it, so after a search on Google I discovered I could just copy the engine from my archived Mac — although the website with the instruction eventually worked, I had to use Google’s cached file to start with.

I’m a little concerned the site might be broken or worse the information might disappear altogether so I though I would republish the instruction, which may be of use to other users?

In order to preserve VisualHub (or AudialHub) if you need to switch computers, you need to back up two things:

  1. The VisualHub (or AudialHub) app itself
  2. The conversion engine

To back up the conversion engine, Copy the folder at: /Library/Application Support/Techspansion (this is the top level Library folder, not the one in your user account).

…for good measure, you can also back up your Preferences file, containing your registration info in case you lose the original purchase e-mail. It’s at:
/Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/com.techspansion.visualhub.plist
…or for AudialHub:
/Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/com.techspansion.audialhub.plist

As far as I can tell, the two programs will continue to work in Snow Leopard, but I obviously can’t predict the future or what Apple will do in it, though.