One more Firewire please

[Alte22a]

Got a PB 15" anybody used one of those Pcmcia cards for an extra firewire connect? Bascially I want to capture footage directly to my Extenal HD cause I dont edit videos on the go. What I do now is, capture to my HD then send everything out to the External. Wish the PB came with two firewire inputs, hmm does the 17" have 2? There doesnt seem to be much of a choice of PCMCiA cards out there. All I need is a 4pin right, to connect the camera? is there a card that doesnt protrude out so much? cant be bother to unplug it when I leave the office and I also have a case that the PB fits nicely into.

Thanks if any body can help

I am asking for too much?

 

[Mr. Anderson]

Is it that hard to post a thread in the correct forum? The News forum has special instructions, try and read them please.

D

 

[Alte22a]

Ooops sorry, still trying to figure this out///

 

[Bear]

A lot of fire wire devices have 2 firewire ports. If your firewire disk has a second firewire port, you could plug the camera into that.

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

Most quality firewire devices offer two firewire ports. They do this so that you cand aisy chain them together. So you could connect your hard drive to your mac from one port and your DV camera to the other port. Firewire allows you to connect a great many devices in a chain like this. This is why Apple feels that one port is sufficient on some of their models.


There is a wide array of PC cards to add FW. Most offer two ports and some offer just one.

MacAlly
Century
OrangeLink, Belkin, and Keyspan

and many others.

 

[Alte22a]

I am aware that you can daisy chain firewire devices. The problem that I am having is that when I hook up my PB to the HD then the HD to the camera, it just captures a few frames then stops. But when I hook up the Camera direct to the PB it works fine. Just a thought isnt the Firewire I/O though put @ something like 40MB/s? Since I need it to transfer @ 35MB/s and traffic going both ways makes up 70MB/s? Just a thought as to wondering why hooking up the PB to the HD to the camera isnt working. Hence the reason that I am thinking about getting a PCMCIA card with just a 4 pin for Video and reserve the six pin for the HD.

 

[DbAscent94]

Finalcut

I have recently purchased the 15" 1ghz powerbook and use the method perscribed above to capture DV. I have had no problems with daisy chaining the camera to the hard drive directly from Log and Capture in FCP 3. External hard drives can often be a bottle neck though. I have an 80 gig Buslink external that has a 7200 rpm drive in it. Seems to work just fine. Sorry if this doesn't really help, just trying to say it can work.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Re: Finalcut

Originally posted by DbAscent94
I have recently purchased the 15" 1ghz powerbook and use the method perscribed above to capture DV. I have had no problems with daisy chaining the camera to the hard drive directly from Log and Capture in FCP 3. External hard drives can often be a bottle neck though. I have an 80 gig Buslink external that has a 7200 rpm drive in it. Seems to work just fine. Sorry if this doesn't really help, just trying to say it can work.

I think you are the exception that makes the rule. AFAIK most people do not recommend daisy chaining the camera to the FW drive you are trying to capture to because most of the time it will not work.


Lethal

 

[bidge]

I also have my camera daisy chained to my exernal hard drive and have no problems, I have two LaCie d2 7200rpm drives.

At school though we have another Firewire drive and I can't capture directly to it at all, using an iMac with 2 firewire ports I have to capture to the internal HD first. It could be a problem withthe HD, oh yeah, capturing straight to my external HD at school works fine. whether daisy chaining or using both firewire ports.

My suggestion is to try it with a different external hard drive

Hope this helps

 

[Alte22a]

Well usually when I am home and not working away. I use the PM with has two ports so with the FW on one and the external HD on the other it works fine but as I said before when daisy chaining it drops frames. Got a feeling that it may be the on board bridge inside of the external FW HD? Any thoughts?