IEEE 1394 HD question

TorS wrote on 4/30/2004, 5:47 AM

My motherboard has an ieee 1394 socket which works OK for video capture/ptt and for my new splendid external HD. But not at the same time.
There are contact points for two more ieee 1394 sockets on the board. So the question is, can I expect a different behaviour if I activate one of those and hook the camera and HD to two different sockets instead of daisying them?
Tor

Comments

InterceptPoint wrote on 4/30/2004, 6:06 AM

Your mileage may vary. Some have quite good luck with Firewire HDs but I cannot reliably capture from my otherwise trusty Sony TRV 900 when I am connected to my Maxtor "One Touch" external drive via the IEEE 1394 port. In general, my 1.9 GHz XP Professional system just doesn't detect the Sony when both are hooked through separate ports or daisy chained. I have not been able to solve this problem via any combination of cables or ports.

My solution was to switch to the USB 2.0 port on the Maxtor. Left alone on the Firewire Bus with my ADVC-100 but no Maxtor HD , the TRV 900 is happy as a clam and works perfectly with ScenalyzerLive but not with Vegas. Vegas sees my ADVC-100 just fine and my Logitech Webcam but hangs when the TRV 900 is connected.

All of this convinces me that there is a driver problem of some sort with the Sony TRV 900 firmware. I may never find out if my theory is true since the work around is just fine and very reliable.

TorS wrote on 5/1/2004, 4:21 AM

Thank you InterceptPoint.
I have the USB possibility too, but if I thought activating another IEEE port would help I'd have preferred that.
Tor

farss wrote on 5/1/2004, 4:27 AM

Certainly having each device on its own port has more chance of success but still no guarantee of success. I've got a ADVC-300 on one port and a M-Audio Firewire 410 on another and at times they seem to get mixed up and it ain't pretty. USB seems to have a lot more arbitration overhead making it slower but it does seem more reliable.

Sometimes I see manufactures of 1394 devices quote verious types of device compliance which makes me wonder if there's not more to all this than we really understand or they're telling us about. And it's not just PCs that have these issues, even the Apple camp seems to have Firewire grief at times.

Jessariah67 wrote on 5/1/2004, 5:28 AM

I have both firewire and USB 2 drives. I find the USB 2 to be a bit more stable.

If you have the room, the best way to go (IMO) is to have a media drive in your computer, capture to that, then transfer to one of the external deives and work from that. Capturing to an internal drive is by far the safest bet, at least in my experience.

HTH

riredale wrote on 5/1/2004, 8:47 AM

I don't know, something must not be configured correctly. I capture from my firewire miniDV camera to an external 120GB drive hanging off my laptop all the time, with no hiccups. The firewire cable from the camera plugs into the second firewire port on the back of my ADS Pyro hard drive enclosure (daisy-chains) and then the ADS Pyro cable connects to the PC card firewire port on my laptop. No issues.

It seems to make no difference whether I hook the camera up to the extra ADS port or to the PC card extra port.

Cheno wrote on 5/1/2004, 8:59 AM

I've got 3 ADS Datatanks daisychained to my JVC deck, no problems. I'm having some IRQ issues with my capture card and too lazy to pull it out right now so I'm connected through the firewire port on my Audigy. Normally I'll have drives on one port and deck on the other. Shouldn't make a difference though from what I gather.

Mike

Jameson_Prod wrote on 5/1/2004, 9:21 AM

I have been on both sides of your problem. With my old MB and a PCI Firewire card. I could only run one thing at a time (camera or hard drive). With my new MB and the same PCI Firewire card, I have been able to run my camera on one port and two daisy-chained firewire 120 GB drives on the other with abolutely no problems. Yes, capture to them through firewire with no dropped frames or problems. What does that mean? I have no idea. I would guess the combination of more CPU cycles available and faster front side bus (800 mghz) just allows things to work better together. It seems to be computer dependent as you are finding out in these post. Some do....some don't....some can't.

Jesseriah has it correct. Capture to your internal HD...then copy to your external. It also gives you a back up (if you can afford the space) until you finish your project. You can never be too safe!

No help I know........

riredale wrote on 5/1/2004, 3:05 PM

Even regular ol' firewire can do up to 400Mb/sec, which is 50MB/sec, or 10x what is needed for DV. One thing you might want to check out is whether there is a more recent BIOS available for your board. I've been surprised by how many nagging problems have magically gone away with updating stuff like BIOSes and drivers.