15ft Firewire cable

[Steve Eisen]

YES a Firewire cable can be too long!

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Andy Mees]

absolutely … max reliable cable length is about 4.5 mteres if i remember correctly. however you can get powered repeaters to boost that length.

[Andy Mees]

check this product https://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=1329
and here, via fibre optics https://www.opticis.com/product_8.htm
(or just type firewire repeater into google and i’ll stop listing the results :-))

[Walter Biscardi]

[HordeX] “So my question is…Can a Firewire cable be too long and not work as well as a shorter one? I know, dumb question…”

Yep, call AJA to find out the maximum allowable Firewire cable to be used with that box. Anything over 6 to 10 feet is probably too long.

We’ve tried multiple long cables here (20 – 75 feet) and they simply don’t work for device control / video transfer. We always end up sending them back.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Walter Biscardi]

And as another thought, you could just move your Mac along with the equipment and invest in high quality DVI cables. I run 40′ DVI cables that were very expensive (something like $150 – $200/each) but they allowed me to move the computer into a completely different room while driving my Dell 24″ and Viewsonic 23″ monitors.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Andy Mees]

i’d have to agree. we went the same way … moved the macs into the rack and used extra long DVI extensions to drive the cinema dispaly’s (but then we whacked on some fibre optic firewire extenders plus usb extenders too, to power the hubs on the monitors)

[Hordex]

Thanks everybody!

[Jasmine1919]

Firewire has a limit of 7.5 metres, after that you switch with fibre optics…

[Rennie Klymyk]

As Walter said, check vith AJA. I have 66 meter firewire cables that past camera to mixer to deck just fine but I’ve tried sending stuff from the computer on them and it won’t go. When firewire 1st came out 15 feet was the max so you should be ok. I’ve considered moving my computer to the rack also but I tend to get a lot of small tasks that require burning or capturing to/from cd/dvd and that would mean I’d have to get off my chair to feed the disc drive every time.

“everything is broken”

[Walter Biscardi]

[Andy Mees] “(but then we whacked on some fibre optic firewire extenders plus usb extenders too, to power the hubs on the monitors)”

We were able to run 30′ USB cables from the monitors to the computer on the Dell and it all worked out fine, thankfully!

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters