firewire troubles

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

firewire troubles

Posted by Bob Pierce on February 20, 2008 at 12:09 am

I’m having trouble using FC with a dv deck attached via fire wire. First off, FC doesn’t recognize the deck (a dsr45) and then, when the deck is attached, all my other firewire devices go haywire. In particular, I find that if the deck is connected, I lose access to firewire 800 drives. Disconnect the deck, and suddenly everything’s OK. Does this sound familiar to anyone? It happened to me once before (with the same deck) using my laptop, but I found that replacing the firewire cable cleared it up. This time I’ve tried 3 different cable to no avail.

As always, thanks in advance for the help.
Bob

Mac Pro 2.66 8GB memory
Mac Book Pro 2.33 Duo
FC Studio
Kona Lhe

Bob Pierce replied 18 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 6 Replies
6 Replies

David Peralta
February 20, 2008 at 7:49 pm

The firewire built into the Mac Pros share the same bus. So when you have a VTR and Fw800 Drive connected, the FW800 will drop to firewire 400. You can try to daisy chain the DSR-45 from the FW800 drive so that at least the bus maintains FW800 speed. But i’d suggest to go out and buy a PCIe Firewire Card (Sonnet and Belkin make a good one) and add that into your system. then put your deck into that card.

hope that helps

-dave

hmm… I wonder what this button does…
Bob Pierce
February 21, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Interesting – but that doesn’t explain the conflict I seem to be having. I’ve basically lost all firewire editing functionality with my system (fortunately, I’ve got a kona on one of my systems, so I’m not totally out of business). Since no one else has responded to this post I’m guessing that it’s a fairly uncommon occurrence. Maybe my deck’s firewire port is kaput.
Thanks for your help!
Bob

Mac Pro 2.66 8GB memory
Mac Book Pro 2.33 Duo
FC Studio
Kona Lhe
David Peralta
February 21, 2008 at 10:24 pm

try zapping the p-ram..

apple+opt+p+r

hold down for 2 gongs.. see if that helps any

hmm… I wonder what this button does…
Bob Pierce
February 23, 2008 at 4:09 pm

Thanks, David. Tried it, no good. Any other ideas out there? As soon as I plug in the deck, I get the “device removal” warning and my firewire 800 drive goes offline.
Thanks,
Bob

Mac Pro 2.66 8GB memory
Mac Book Pro 2.33 Duo
FC Studio
Kona Lhe
David Peralta
February 24, 2008 at 2:05 am

Hey Bob,

do you happen to have the DSR-45 and FW800 drives plugged into the onboard FW ports? if you do.. that might be causing the conflict…

also have you tried the VTR on another mac?

hmm… I wonder what this button does…
Bob Pierce
February 24, 2008 at 8:33 pm

Hi David,
Thanks again for hanging in there with me on this. Yes, I do have a DSR 45 and I’m using the built in firewire ports on the Mac Pro. I had this problem once before with my Mac Book, but it cleared up after I switched the firewire cable going to the deck. I worked successfully for a long time using this setup (the on board firewire ports) – is this a known problem? I haven’t heard about that one. Without using firewire ports how can you edit with a laptop?

I’ll try using the deck and firewire drive with the laptop to see if it’s having the same problem.
Thanks,
Bob

Mac Pro 2.66 8GB memory
Mac Book Pro 2.33 Duo
FC Studio
Kona Lhe

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