Using a Firewire card

kunal wrote on 9/9/2005, 10:18 AM

I'm thinking of upgrading to one of Lenovo's T4x series laptops, however none of them have a FireWire port -- something that I definitely need for video capture.

I was looking at FireWire cards that fit into the PCMCIA slots, something like this one:
http://www.theboyz.biz/product_info.php?products_id=40492

Has anyone used cards instead of a direct upload through an inbuilt FireWire port? Any issues with data transfer rates/dropped frames/resolution?

This worries me a bit over here:
Motion Video Capture:
Data Rate: Video is captured at 3.9 MB/second

Is that typically the rate at which video is captured, or is this significantly low?

Any input would be appreciated !

On a side note -- what are your favorite notebook brands for video editing? (I'm a PC person -- I might move over to the apple world sometime, but not anytime soon... ;) )

Thanks,
Kunal

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 9/9/2005, 10:41 AM

3.9MB/second sounds just about right. DV with audio streams at about 30Mbps and there are 8 bits to a Byte.

Stick with PCs if you want to use Vegas; it's not available for Mac.

Mac: pay more and get less. What a concept!

Liam_Vegas wrote on 9/9/2005, 10:58 AM

I have used PCMCIA Firewire cards in laptops both for external hard drives and also for capture of DV video. Worked just fine. Make sure the card (and the slot) is CARDBUS capable.

riredale wrote on 9/9/2005, 1:58 PM

I have a generic cheapo Dell 2650 about two years old and I can capture just fine with a PCMCIA firewire card.

I don't know why, but I have this fantasy image of getting a tiny Toshiba R200 with a big firewire external drive and editing in exotic foreign locations. Beautiful women in flowing dresses bring me fancy drinks with little umbrellas in them while I watch dolphins frolic in the pounding surf not far away. A courier delivers a paycheck for $100,000. Life is good.