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Need two FW buses for 1 LaCie + 1 AJA IO?
I know there’s a prevalent amount of information out there about not being able to capture with a FW deck + a FW drive, that you have to have more than one FW bus, and that ALL of the firewire ports on my G5 are on the same bus. But does that conflict extend to working with the AJA IO? By necessity we’re now having to capture from AJA to an external LaCie 250, 8-bit Uncompressed. Is this going to cause major issues? Do we need another FW card?
Thanks.
Nick
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8 Replies
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Yes. All the FW ports on the G5 are on the same bus. AJA Io cannot be on the same bus as other FW devices. Solution? Another FW card.
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The restriction is that you can not have more than one “video device” (like a camcorder AND a deck) connected at the same time to one Mac.
A FW HD is not a “video device.”
There are thousands of folks using external FW drives and capturing video to them.BTW, if the G5 has a FW and a FW800 port, they are different buses.
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AJA says you can’t have *anything* sharing the FW bus. It uses all the throughput of a FW400 bus.
G5 FW ports, all of them, FW400 and 800, use one bus.
EdThis is from the Apple developers site:
https://devworld.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G5/PowerMacG5/3Input-Output/chapter_4_section_3.html
>>>FireWire PortsThe Power Mac G5 computer has one FireWire 800 port based on IEEE 1394b and two FireWire 400 IEEE 1394a ports. Each FireWire port
supports booting the system from a mass storage device
supports target disk mode
provides bus repeating capability as long as the computer is connected to AC power
provides power for FireWire devices both in run and sleep mode (useful for charging the iPod)
The three FireWire ports share a single power supply that can provide up to 15 watts total. The three ports are all on the same FireWire bus and can connect to up 62 other FireWire devices.The FireWire hardware and software provided with the Power Mac G5 computer are capable of all asynchronous and isochronous transfers defined by IEEE standards 1394a and 1394b.
Note: FireWire cables are not included with this product and must be purchased independently, if required.<<<< [Thax] “The restriction is that you can not have more than one “video device” (like a camcorder AND a deck) connected at the same time to one Mac.
A FW HD is not a “video device.”
There are thousands of folks using external FW drives and capturing video to them.BTW, if the G5 has a FW and a FW800 port, they are different buses.”
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YES… You need to have a seperate card to do what you are wanting to do. This applies to ALL Macs – G4 and G5. And I am sure this will spill over into the new Intel Macs as well.
BTW, Thanx…. My G5 only has one firewire buss for both FW400 and FW800. If I plug in a FW400 device, my FW800 devices back down to FW400. This is another reason for the additional firewire adapter cards.
<< "The restriction is that you can not have more than one "video device" (like a camcorder AND a deck) connected at the same time to one Mac." I concurr with Thax on this... I know from experience that you can ONLY use one machine at a time. If you have two machines like myself, you can only have one at a time powered up, otherwise FCP will get confused and give you an error message. _______________________________ Wayne Carey Schazam Productions http://www.schazamproductions.com
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For those few times that I need to capture through the Firewire port, as opposed to through the Aja Io, I’ve found that I can simply plug the Firewire camcorder (or deck) into the front FW400 port on the front of the G5 and “turn off” the Io by toggleing the View option. When this is done, you will notice that the Firewire talley light on the Io unit will turn off effectively disconnecting it from the computer. At this point, there is no conflict between the two devices, and capture via Firewire will work without any problems. When you are finished capturing, unmount the FW device (camera or deck) and simply toggle the Io back online.
I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now without any problems. No need to actually disconnect the Io from the G5 while capturing through Firewire.
Tom -
Seems a FW Card of some sort to go into the PCI slot is in order if I’m going to capture with IO and store on FW drives? (I have a mix of FW400 and FW800). Which FW bus cards work on the PCI-X G5? Any recommendations?
Love,
JeffFinal Cut Studio 5.1, G5 2GHz Dual Processr, 2.5Gb RAM, AJA IO
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[Nick Ryan] “But does that conflict extend to working with the AJA IO? By necessity we’re now having to capture from AJA to an external LaCie 250, 8-bit Uncompressed. Is this going to cause major issues? Do we need another FW card?”
We have zero issues here running an AJA Io LA and Firewire drives on the same system. We’ve capture 8bit uncompressed to LaCie BDE’s (FW 800) and G-RAID’s (FW 800) with zero issues.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
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[Tom Matthies] “I’ve found that I can simply plug the Firewire camcorder (or deck) into the front FW400 port on the front of the G5 and “turn off” the Io by toggleing the View option.”
I’ve done this, too. It’s possible to simply toggle back & forth between the Io & a FW deck during an edit/capture session with no ill effect. I have a client with an Io, and we typically offline to FW 800 drives plugged into the same main FW bus as the Io.
Arnie
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