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dummyfung · Apr 20, 2006, 04:06 AM

Hey pepz, OK im a video editor and am planning to get the macbook pro for my work on the go. However i have a lil delima with with the firewire 400 as i need to capture video throught the firewire plus i want to use an external firewire drive to store my video. Now the firewire 400's are still slow and cant keep up with my hard disk is 1 problem, 2 for me to capture throught firewire and dump my captured video files im going to need two firewire ports, 3 i need to know if the quality will still hold. Now is there any solution for my problem and its my only problem hold me back from this baby.

are there any firewire 800's for the /34 slots yet? and if there are does it run just as fast as a native firewire 800?

tq

dcp325 · Apr 20, 2006, 04:26 AM

Maybe just use an external drive that uses USB2 instead of firewire?
My setup uses a harddrive on USB2 and I have never experienced problems with it while capturing video to it over firewire.

dummyfung · Apr 20, 2006, 06:21 AM

Cool... Well what settings do you normal capture your video at? and how high have you gone with it?

Well other then that I use Avid DV and the last time i checked Avid does not detect firewire through a pcmcia slot i wonder it gives the same prob. with the /34?

Thanks Dcp id still like to know what other options I have so if anyone else has another solution do tell. One can never be to sure when they are going to need a PLAN B.

Dr Reducto · Apr 20, 2006, 08:50 AM

You could always get an eSATA Express Card and eSATA external drive

dummyfung · Apr 21, 2006, 05:31 AM

Mmm... eSATA express card sounds promising... can anyone tell me more about it or where i could findout more about it?

ism · Apr 21, 2006, 06:15 AM

Here's one: http://www.vydeo.com/products/eSATA.html

Larg0 · Apr 21, 2006, 05:18 PM

Woah, is that way way faster than firewire?? Where would one get a drive for that connection? Does that site say the card isn't actually available yet?

So long,
Larg0

tooki · Apr 21, 2006, 06:34 PM

Originally Posted by RajivRai

Hey pepz, OK im a video editor and am planning to get the macbook pro for my work on the go. However i have a lil delima with with the firewire 400 as i need to capture video throught the firewire plus i want to use an external firewire drive to store my video. Now the firewire 400's are still slow and cant keep up with my hard disk is 1 problem, 2 for me to capture throught firewire and dump my captured video files im going to need two firewire ports, 3 i need to know if the quality will still hold.

Have you tried capturing from DV onto a FireWire 400 disk? You should have no trouble doing it. A FW400 bus is 400Mbps (50MB/sec), and a DV stream is precisely 3.6MB/sec. Even with it having to flow twice (once to the computer, then out to the drive) that's 7.2MB/sec, FAR below the 50MB/sec of the FW400 interface, and far below the sustained performance of the drive.

As for not having enough ports: get a drive with two FW ports and daisy-chain them. Or get a FW hub.

tooki

mduell · Apr 21, 2006, 07:05 PM

RajivRai you have a lot of options.

The cheapest would be a USB enclosure; even a low end one won't have trouble sustaining 80-160Mbps, much less the 30Mbps for DV: ~$30.

Next cheapest option is a Firewire enclosure with two ports for daisy chaining: ~$40.

Next option is a Firewire hub and a Firewire enclosure with one port: ~$50 for both pieces.

From there you could move up to a eSATA ExpressCard and external SATA drive; I'm not sure how the pricing on ECs are (PC Cards are dirt cheap), so the price would be between $50 and $100 for both parts, but at this point the performance is really overkill, even if you're doing DVCPROHD.

dummyfung · 10:33 PM

Hey thanks guys, now there's nothing stopping me from getting my MBP except for the lil issue of cash flow. Just gonna have to sell my old Julie( g4 Dual 867) ai she was good im gonna miss her... for awhile.

Ya i do use DV but i want to have the option of running uncompressed once in awhile. And once i start working on HD perhaps i would get the eSATA cards.

ism · Apr 22, 2006, 04:35 AM

Just to clarify: If you are editing video (DV) it is recommended that you have the camera and capture drives on separate buses. So the minimum I would recommend you do is get a FW400 expresscard and an external FW400 drive to capture to/edit from.

mduell · Apr 22, 2006, 09:57 PM

Originally Posted by ism

Just to clarify: If you are editing video (DV) it is recommended that you have the camera and capture drives on separate buses. So the minimum I would recommend you do is get a FW400 expresscard and an external FW400 drive to capture to/edit from.

Firewire ExpressCard+Enclosure is slower and more expensive than (e)SATA ExpressCard+Enclosure.

ism · Apr 23, 2006, 04:35 AM

That's great then, might as well go with that.

I was just trying to point out that you don't really want to be using USB for video and also having everything on the same bus with firewire can sometimes cause problems.

dummyfung · Apr 24, 2006, 03:22 AM

So is eSATA already out for consumer to grab and if they are, what are the prices that we are looking at?

mduell · Apr 24, 2006, 03:30 AM

Originally Posted by RajivRai

So is eSATA already out for consumer to grab and if they are, what are the prices that we are looking at?

On second look, all the SATA cards I can find are EC/54, not the smaller EC/34 slot that Apple has chosen to use.

The enclosures are cheap ($20-30), but until Apple adds external SATA ports or the bigger slot, you'll have to use FW or USB.

Timetheus · Apr 24, 2006, 12:43 PM

Of course, now you could just get the 17" with FW800 assuming you can afford it. Hopefully you didn't already place that order.

pat++ · Apr 24, 2006, 02:37 PM

Yep the 17" MacBook Pro might be a good option now as it does have Firewire 800

dummyfung · Apr 26, 2006, 12:48 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

On second look, all the SATA cards I can find are EC/54, not the smaller EC/34 slot that Apple has chosen to use.

The enclosures are cheap ($20-30), but until Apple adds external SATA ports or the bigger slot, you'll have to use FW or USB.

The eSATA card by vydeo is a /34 card... The link is in one of the 1st few messages above in this thread.