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Firewire to new laptops without express card slots — yes?
Two of us need to buy a laptop on which to use Vegas 10 and future models. Our elderly cameras use firewire. I’m learning that some laptop models appear not to have firewire but do, but also that many don’t have firewire ports and neither do they have Express Card slots with which to make a connection. I’m not clear on how doable it is to conect a firewire-based camera to a USB 3.0 in a laptop — can it be done, and is speed lost doing it this way?
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7 Replies
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You may come across adds for devices that claim to be “USB to firewire” but don’t waste your money as they don’t work.
Laptops have been discussed here several times so I’m sure that a quick search will turn up at least a few models that still support firewire. -
Steve
At a minimum you need the XpressCard slot. Mike is correct in that the USB -> Firewire is a waste of time. I’ve been down that path. Good high-end laptops support XpressCard.
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The problem with USB to Firewire isn’t speed… particularly since most video cameras run at 100Mb/s mode (the slowest Firewire mode).
The problem is more complex. When they worked out the specs for DV tape, the format was very much a digital version of analog tape, and very much NOT computer-like take. In short, none of the transport stuff that lets computers start and stop tape drives.
The upshot of this is that, when you play a bitstream from a digital tape, it just plays… it’s exactly like the output of an analog deck, only digital. You can control a deck with the usual tricks: LANC or whatever. But there’s no computer-like start/stop on a block or byte basis.
Enter Firewire… Firewire is a multi-mastered bus. It can just send, send, send out from the camera without any knowledge of the receiving device. Just like an analog output. So it was a great match for what they wanted to do in digital tape. This is also why you can get dropouts and have to “capture” rather than “copy” from your Firewire-based camera.
Ok, so that’s Firewire.. the camera can just send, send, send. USB is different, it’s not a multi-mastered bus, it’s a “master/slave” or “host/target” bus or whatever you want to call that. In short, a USB device can’t just start sending data. A PC or other device has to basically go ask each target if there’s data, then set up the transfer. Once the transfer’s set up, the device can send some finite number of blocks… a very computery way to do things. SATA and PATA pretty much work the same way, whereas SCSI (which was one model for Firewire, since Apple wanted SCSI to Firewire bridges to work easily) was multimastered.
So in your Firewire to USB converter, you need a Firewire port that can take in the data dump from your camera, and a USB target port that hooks to your PC. The PC sets up a transfer, you press play, data starts going into that brick. The PC checks USB, sees a transfer request, goes into DMA mode and lets the USB device send some data… it’s all good. For awhile.
At some point, the PC gets busy, in a driver or whatever… other USB activity slows things, whatever. The buffer fills and fills, then runs over… transfer failed. That’s really just the problem. With a massive buffer, a USB to Firewire device like this would work just dandy. But that gets expensive… many MB of RAM, in addition to the CPU, Firewire port, USB port, and software you need to run the device. So hey.. why not put in cheaper flash memory, an SD card or something, instead of that RAM. Or even a hard drive.
And that’s just what happens.. and so, there are plenty of Firewire to HDD devices, but no Firewire to USB worthy of mention.
-Dave
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Great explanation, Dave! Are you suggesting a fire store drive be used?
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Thanks all so much. I can report that Sony Viao F models don’t list firewire in advertised specs but do include the (four-pin) ports on the machines; that some of Dell’s Alienware models provide four-pin ports; and that some medium-high end Quosimo models offer neither firewire ports nor express card slots. Thanks again.
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Check out the Pinnacle Studio Movie Box… a thingy that plugs into the USB port and has firewire, s-video and composite inputs. It comes with Pinnacle’s software, but that should let you capture from the camera when the laptop hasn’t got a firewire port.
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“Check out the Pinnacle Studio Movie Box…”
Check this forum and you’ll find out that box doesn’t work with Vegas.
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