Capture: How long firewire cable can be ?

[Pierre-luc Pare]

I found it, 15 feet max.

Sorry

Don’t fear the tiger, the Cow is near!

Studio Plasma
Mastering & DVD
Montreal (QC) Canada
http://www.studioplasma.ca

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Just to stir the pot…

I do work at a production house where the decks are all in the “tape machine room” and we routinely run FW cables up to 80 feet to FCP Macs every day.

With that same company, we recorded on-location at a ball-park with multiple cameras feeding a switcher with FW inputs.

One of the camera’s FW cables was about 200 feet long (two 80-footers and a 40-footer, end-to-end) and the other two were each on 80-foot FW lines.

The image and audio (we fed the wireless mics into one of the cameras) was just perfect over three days of outdoor shooting.

Its a digital signal, so its either “there” or its not. No deterioration like in analog line-loss.

We were skeptical as well, but we tried it, it worked great, and now we have used a similar set-up (not EVERY shoot requires THAT much distance, of course) several times.

No speculation, just my experience.

[Pierre-luc Pare]

That’s pretty long, 200 feet. And how long was the longer shot ? I mean, maybe it works well just for capture/playback under certain amount of continuous time…

Don’t fear the tiger, the Cow is near!

Studio Plasma
Mastering & DVD
Montreal (QC) Canada
http://www.studioplasma.ca

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

The long FW cameera runs simply “worked” during the shoots.

And the long runs in the edit bays work with FCP and DV decks.

It just works like a 6-footer does if you had the deck right next to the Mac.

Where did you find “15 feet” as a recommended max. length?

Obviously, the shorter the better.

My point is that we have actually (and consistently) USED long-run FW cables and had no problems.

As always, “your mileage may vary.”

[Pierre-luc Pare]

Well I found it on a Apple Discussion troubleshooting article and another website talking about Firewire protocol. Forgot the links.

Don’t fear the tiger, the Cow is near!

Studio Plasma
Mastering & DVD
Montreal (QC) Canada
http://www.studioplasma.ca

[Rich Rubasch]

YOu can also get extenders that come in 15 foot lengths and string as many of them as you need.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

I think what Pierre-Luc was saying is that he thought 15 feet was the MAX length that FW was supposed to be used.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Thax] ”
I do work at a production house where the decks are all in the “tape machine room” and we routinely run FW cables up to 80 feet to FCP Macs every day.

With that same company, we recorded on-location at a ball-park with multiple cameras feeding a switcher with FW inputs.”

I’d like to know how you guys can do this because we’ve tested 50 and 75 firewire cables here and cannot get anything longer than 15 feet to work. We had the DSR-11, now have the Sony 15U HDV deck and the Panasonic 1200A deck. neither of them can be controlled or even recognized by FCP with anything longer than 15 feet.

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]

[walter biscardi] “because we’ve tested 50 and 75 firewire cables”

should read 50 and 75 foot cables

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

[Sean Oneil]

I’d like to know as well. I’ve tried a 30ft cable by itself with no luck.

I use Gefen FW extenders. You attach it to the end of a 15ft cable, and then you can daisy chain 33ft cables up to 250ft (it has a booster to allow 33ft cables to work). Messy but it works.

Sean