[Captain Curt]

Hello, I'm wondering why firewire is losing favor at Apple. It seems to have great capacity. If wirefire is being dropped, what would Intel's new replacemnt be? Thanks.

[dlefebvre]

Maybe they are droping it for consumer puposes (like the iPod). But I doubt it will disapear with all the DV, DVCPro, HDV and DVCPro HD cameras out there.

[analogika]

It will not be replaced by USB for anything where timing is critical - i.e. professional audio and video.

Firewire is optimized for SUSTAINED data rates, while USB works in "burst" mode - meaning that data is shoved over the connection in large bursts, with lags in between.

For media production, the implication is that while data rates over time might be high, the pause between "bursts" of data means that some data might not quite make it ON TIME. Which, in audio or video production, results in drop-outs, which destroys the production.

Also, even the nominal speed of 480 Mbit/sec of USB2 is *theoretically* higher than the 400 Mbit of Firewire 400, but that 480 Mbit is only the maximum during "bursts" - actual average is quite a bit lower.

With Firewire 800, the argument is moot for any professional media application.

[ShotgunEd]

Originally Posted by analogika

With Firewire 800, the argument is moot for any professional media application.

How so?

[analogika]

Originally Posted by ShotgunEd

How so?

Because no other protocol apart from gigabit ethernet comes close to the bandwidth?

[Millennium]

Firewire is dropping out of favor at Apple because even though it is a better technology it is more expensive, and Apple's new hardware mantra is cheap-trumps-good.

[Randman]

Originally Posted by Millennium

Firewire is dropping out of favor at Apple because Apple caters to PC users as much if not more than Mac users and most PC users have USB.

You could have said this as well.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Randman

You could have said this as well.

Most modern PC users -including almost all of those with PCs made since Macs started including USB 2.0- also have FireWire, so this argument is moot; the audience Apple is catering to has both.

[outsourced]

None of us know what Apple is doing with Firewire. It is an IEEE standard, after all.

Just take a deep breath, hold it...hold it...hold it...wait...ok. Hold it...hold...it...ok.

(Is he unconscious yet?)

Hold it! dammit!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Intel's replacement?!?!

[CIA]

I seem to remember there were some Firewire 800 read/write issues with the original Powermac G5's, were these ever fixed in the later versions? I just ordered a Quad, and plan on putting 2 of my older WD 120SE PATA drives from my qucksilver into a external firewire 800 RAID box and want to make sure I am getting the best performance.

[hmurchison2001]

eSATA will replace FW for drives. For longer networks Fibre will take over as well. FW is pretty much dead as far as future development.

[Moon Potato]

There's no way apple would drop firewire 400. One of the biggest strengths of the OSX platform is it's extensive video capabilities. Firewire helps sell copies of Final Cut, and iMovie (which needs firewire) helps sell consumer macs.

Firewire 800 is another matter, though... pretty much the only devices that use it are a limited selection of expensive hard drive enclosures. Anyone who really needs more speed than a FW400 connection can muster (and let's face it... most people don't work with more than 3 or 4 streams of DV at once) are better off getting a SATA card with external ports and setting up an external SATA array. It's not much more expensive than a FW800 setup, and the speed increases (especially in a RAID) are spectacular.

FW800 vs. SATA results: http://www.barefeats.com/hard60.html

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Moon Potato

Anyone who really needs more speed than a FW400 connection can muster (and let's face it... most people don't work with more than 3 or 4 streams of DV at once) are better off getting a SATA card with external ports and setting up an external SATA array. It's not much more expensive than a FW800 setup, and the speed increases (especially in a RAID) are spectacular.

Not a viable mobile solution.

[Moon Potato]

Originally Posted by analogika

Not a viable mobile solution.

On a powerbook, processor speed is going to be a bottleneck before data rate in pretty much anything other than capturing uncompressed video, which you'd be insane to do on a mobile in the first place... and if you really have no choice, there's always this:
http://sewelldirect.com/SerialATAPCM..._search=search

[analogika]

Audio production greatly benefits from the additional bandwidth of FW 800, especially when recording to an external Firewire disk via a Firewire audio interface.

That S-ATA card looks interesting, and is certainly a good alternative to using a Firewire Cardbus card for an additional FW controller, but external S-ATA drives are AFAIK quite a bit more expensive currently, and the FW 800 hard drive daisy-chain is a much less complicated and more unbureaucratic solution that gives enough bandwidth for most use.

[stevesnj]

I think that SATA is a wrong move for the next step in data/media storage transfers. I think Apple will use FiberOPT as its new standard. Data rates for FiberOPT exceded SATA, from what I understand. It is a multiuse port for almost any type of device and I expect it to replace USB Firewire A/B and SATA. I bet that the Intel Macs will use FiberOPT for their drives. I also believe that Apple may be the first to use the upcoming Solid State storage drives. I think FiberOPT is the next venture for Apple and all computers in the next few years.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by Moon Potato

On a powerbook, processor speed is going to be a bottleneck before data rate in pretty much anything other than capturing uncompressed video, which you'd be insane to do on a mobile in the first place... and if you really have no choice, there's always this:
http://sewelldirect.com/SerialATAPCM..._search=search

Actually network television shows are sometimes edited on PowerBooks.

IIRC, NBC's Scrubs sitcom is edited entirely on a 17" PowerBook.

[Moon Potato]

Originally Posted by vmarks

Actually network television shows are sometimes edited on PowerBooks.

IIRC, NBC's Scrubs sitcom is edited entirely on a 17" PowerBook.

Do you have any more information on what kind of setup they use? I'm curious why any large studio would accept the limitations of a powerbook for editing their shows.

[stevesnj]

Originally Posted by Moon Potato

Do you have any more information on what kind of setup they use? I'm curious why any large studio would accept the limitations of a powerbook for editing their shows.

Well you can edit on a PowerBook but most likely they use XrAID for their storage. But on a PowerBook alone idunno

[hmurchison2001]

Originally Posted by Moon Potato

Do you have any more information on what kind of setup they use? I'm curious why any large studio would accept the limitations of a powerbook for editing their shows.

Lots of studios edit on portables. Editing isn't the hard part it's the capture/ingesting and processing the heavier effects. Edits can simply consist of simple cuts, keyframes etc. That's easy and there's no use in taking up a workstation for doing those tasks.

[Moon Potato]

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001

Lots of studios edit on portables. Editing isn't the hard part it's the capture/ingesting and processing the heavier effects. Edits can simply consist of simple cuts, keyframes etc. That's easy and there's no use in taking up a workstation for doing those tasks.

That's exactly the point I was making... while offline editing on a powerbook makes perfect sense, the process will have to be moved over to desktops once uncompressed footage and major rendering is brought into the picture. And for offline editing, there's no point in having anything faster than FW400. Powerbook users will almost never need anything faster than FW400, and when they do, there are technologies superior to FW800 available. FW400 has successfully carved out a place for itself in the computer/video world, but FW800 has yet to be used in anything aside from data storage (to the best of my knowledge), for which there are several competing protocols, some of which are both faster AND cheaper.

[ll350]

I think if you check out the wikipedia article on firewire you might find the answer to a lot of questions raised in this thread, like the roll Apple played in inventing the Firewire standard, as well as the fact the Firewire data transfer has a very low impact on the processor, since the technology bypasses it.

For my money, since apple wanted a chip supplier who would make enough high end chips for them to sell more computers, and intel wanted a customer for their innovative new technologies, I'd say that Apple will probably incorporate Wireless USB in their future computers, to occupy the roll that USB 2.0 currently has, and probably have SATA II+ ports to replace firewire 800 for external data storage.

[redeye78]

You are all saying this because the new iPods don't have firewire.
The only reason they don't is because the interface internally was too big.
Steve wanted them to be sleek and slim as possible. USB 2 is more than
adequate for the new iPods as far as speed is concerned. Firewire for video
will be around for a long time.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Moon Potato

And for offline editing, there's no point in having anything faster than FW400.

Nor anything larger than 640 KB.

[oobi]

Originally Posted by Moon Potato

That's exactly the point I was making... while offline editing on a powerbook makes perfect sense, the process will have to be moved over to desktops once uncompressed footage and major rendering is brought into the picture.

What if the rendering were being performed by X-Raid servers? Couldn't the original files be stored on networked storage/media servers, and rendered out there, with the laptop serving only as a dashboard?

JW

[GuyWithACamera]

You can't boot from an external USB drive.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by analogika

It will not be replaced by USB for anything where timing is critical - i.e. professional audio and video.

Firewire is optimized for SUSTAINED data rates, while USB works in "burst" mode - meaning that data is shoved over the connection in large bursts, with lags in between.

For media production, the implication is that while data rates over time might be high, the pause between "bursts" of data means that some data might not quite make it ON TIME. Which, in audio or video production, results in drop-outs, which destroys the production.

Also, even the nominal speed of 480 Mbit/sec of USB2 is *theoretically* higher than the 400 Mbit of Firewire 400, but that 480 Mbit is only the maximum during "bursts" - actual average is quite a bit lower.

USB has 4 transfer modes (explanations shamelessly cribbed from the Wikipedia):

• control transfers - typically used for short, simple commands to the device, and a status response, used e.g. by the bus control pipe number 0
• isochronous transfers - at some guaranteed speed (often but not necessarily as fast as possible) but with possible data loss, e.g. realtime audio or video
• interrupt transfers - devices that need guaranteed quick responses (bounded latency), e.g. pointing devices and keyboards
• bulk transfers - large sporadic transfers using all remaining available bandwidth (but with no guarantees on bandwidth or latency), e.g. file transfers

Note that second one. I believe it's limited to 196Mbps for isochronous transfers, but if I recall correctly that's true of Firewire 400 too (or can it hit 393Mbps for isochronous transfers?). The USB site has a lot more info on high speed isochronous transfers if you're interested in becoming educated.

Originally Posted by Millennium

Most modern PC users -including almost all of those with PCs made since Macs started including USB 2.0- also have FireWire, so this argument is moot; the audience Apple is catering to has both.

I disagree. The largest computer OEMs in the world still don't include FW on a some of their machines and the older a machine is the less likely it has IEEE1394 even if it does have USB2.

Originally Posted by analogika

Not a viable mobile solution.

I use external SATA (but not e.SATA) with my laptop. Works great.

Originally Posted by Moon Potato

Do you have any more information on what kind of setup they use? I'm curious why any large studio would accept the limitations of a powerbook for editing their shows.

This article claims they did, but it also says they're accessing Xserve RAIDs over 802.11b. That sounds absurd.

[production_coordinator]

The only reason iPods went USB2 was due to the fact that many PCs don't have Firewire. It's impossible to sell a iPod and Firewire PCI card to a PC novice.

Customer: "You mean I have to open up my computer? Forget it!"

The Firewire iPod was around pre USB2... and we really didn't have an alternative.