Does FireWire 800 support 1080i?

Hey Everyone!
I'm getting interested in upgrading my Windows 7 to a MacBook Pro (latest model with Disc Drive - not newest one) FINALLY!
The reason I'm switching is because I have a Canon XH A1...and I can't get the full quality from the camera onto my PC.
Furthermore, it's always massive Mission to get my footage from the camera to the computer with every project I do.
The Canon XH A1 has a DV/HDV output (I record on HDV tapes), so I'm planning to get fottage from the camera via FireWire 800.
BUT before I get too ahead of myself, I want to make sure that Firewire 800 DOES support 1080i / Full HD or, 'HDV' Video.
Any help would be great, and much appreciated!

Firewire is not a video protocol. It's a device transfer protocol. It transfers data faster than USB 2.0 by a factor of about 2 times. The 1080i refers to a picture's resolution and depends upon the display device.

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Does FireWire 800 see individual drives in a four bay hard drive enclosure?

I am trying to find a four bay hard drive enclosure with FireWire 800 interface, AND through this one FW800 connection my OS can see the four hard drives individually (similar to USB interface or Port Multiplier on eSATA interface). Anyone knows whether such a product exists? Thanks.

I'm not sure you fully understand how the hardware/software RAID system functions. If you create a mirrored RAID with either then you have redundancy for drive failure. This would be the case for either hardware or software arrays. If you create a striped array with hardware or software then there is no redundancy regardless of which method you use.
An enclosure failure can occur whether you use software or hardware based arrays, so the failure risks are the same. There's no reason to believe that the failure risk of the enclosure would be greater than using software. In fact it's likely that the hardware would be more reliable. As for differences between eSATA and Firewire reliability I'm not sure why your would believe one is more reliable than the other unless you have data that supports such a conclusion.
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What do I need to support my FireWire 800 gear on a new iMac

I need to replace my antique mac pro 1.1
I am now retired and my needs tend more towards games than av creation so the new Mac Pro is not only overkill but the dual video I here is not optimized for games in any case.
The problem is all of my existing FireWire 800 gear and no FireWire ports on the new iMac designs
I guess I need to buy an external thunderbolt case for the 4 2 terabyte drives in the old pro do any of the external T-bolt cases offer good FireWire 800 support (full speed support) for all of my old gear?
Are there other ways to support these devices than an external t-bolt case for sata drives?
And for a game playing iMac is a fusion drive or a large solid state drive best choice bearing in mind I will have about 10 terabytes of FireWire and t-bolt external storage ( I was thinking of making the drives in the required t-bolt external case a raid array for best performance)
So what external t-bolt drive case should I buy and if it does not support a set of FireWire 800 ports what external t-bolt gadget for that support should I buy?
Thanks

Windshadow99 wrote:
I looked at those but would it not be far better to have a gadget that plugged into a t-bolt port and then had a bunch of FireWire 800 ports on it? There must be lots of folks that like me invested in FW800 gear with their older computers and need something like this.
Perhaps, though as with anything it depends on your needs. I don't know of any such device, though. All the Thunderbolt docks I've seen that have Firewire at all have only a single port. You could use a TBolt to FW adapter with Thunderbolt ports in a dock, though. A Firewire hub isn't a lot of good other than providing multiple connectors since all devices are on the same FW bus and hence not really much different from daisy-chaining. There's certainly no performance improvement and probably not much in the way of stability improvement either.
I was told a long time ago back in the mac 2fx sccsi days that daisy chaining things should be avoided and giving things their own pro was better does this advice sill hold good?
SCSI was very different (and usually wasn't a problem as long as it was terminated correctly). Daisy-chaining FW is different, though it very much depends on the devices and the sort of throughput you need. Daisy-chaining Thunderbolt should be no problem at all as long as the devices support it.
Regards.

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External Firewire 800 500GB WD drive does not mount

Hi-
Here is the problem.
i) Bought a lacie 500GB d2 drive using firewire 800 to connect to the iMAC but did not work. The port was seeing the drive but disconnecting it every 10 secs thinking that I was unmounting it during operations. I returned back the drive to the apple store since i saw that it had way too many problems.
ii) Replaced the Lacie d2 drive with a WD 500 GB external firewire MyBook Pro but the mac does NOT see or mount the drive at all.
iii) Bought a 23" HD cinema display and extended my dekstop over. I did not connect the additional USB/Firewire plugs to the iMAC as I am plugging in the drive to the iMAC and not the cinema display.
I have tried the following:
-Power off the mac and disconnect the power both on the WD and the MAC
-Check/Uncheck the ports through the preferences menu for firewire
-Repaired permission with the disk utility on the internal hard drive
Any ideas as to why the ports do not recognize/mount at all this drive?

I have read elsewhere that the FW 800 port on the iMac 24 can be a bit tricky. You may want to make sure you have a good connection.
I formatted mine out of the box which is just good practice and because I wanted to make a partition bootable/clone.
Powering on/off wont make a difference.
I don't know what you mean by uncheck/check ports for firewire. There are no such prefs in OSX.
Repairing permissions has nothing to do with hardware.
You only plug the FW 800 plug into the FW 800 port on the iMac. You use the other ports on the drive to plug other drives in on a daisy chain.
Go into drive utility and see if it shows up there for formatting. If not, then you have a bad cable. Try the regular FW 400 port and hook up that way. The 400 and 800 share the same bridge. If that doesn't work, and another drive does, then the FW bus on the drive is dead.

When I plug in my Lacie Firewire 800 drive it causes certain apps to crash. Chrome will immediately crash when I open it, so will DVD player. It's only when I plug in my Firewire 800 drive, USB does not cause issues. What's the deal?

When I plug in my Lacie Firewire 800 drive into my Mid-2009 Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion - 10.8.2, it causes certain apps to crash. Chrome will immediately crash when I open it, so will DVD player. It's only when I plug in my Firewire 800 drive, USB does not cause issues. What's the deal?
I've restarted, verfied the disk, repaired permissions, smc reset.. don't know what else to do..

Contact Lacie since it's their product you are having issues with.

Focusrite Saffire does not show up when connected to Imac by Firewire 800

When I connect my focusrite saffire to my i7 imac 27" via the firewire 800 port, the device does not show up on the computer, however it does light up indicating it is being powered off the firewire. When I click on "about this mac<more info<firewire", all I see is this " Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec", I have checked and my "AppleFWAudio" file is up to date. The Focusrite uses Firewire 400 but I use an adaptor which converts it to 800, I have tried different adapters and cables from a number of companies which were suggested by Focusrite themselves and none of them worked.
Any ideas on what the problem could be?

I too was having problems connecting my Focusrite Saffire to my new iMac 27" i7. It would light up and click several times, but it would never be in a ready state w/ both LINE indicators being green. The Saffire Control software would say the the Saffire DSP didn't load and to unplug it and re-plug and wait for the lights to turn green, but that never happened. I called Sweetwater (where I bought the unit) and they didn't seem to know of any prevailing issues, BUT the tech did suggest to reboot the iMac in 32 bit mode (hold down the '3' and '2' keys during startup). I did that and replugged the Saffire but it exhibited the same problem. I unplugged it and left it for like 3 minutes then reattached the firewire cable and it mounted. I opened up the Sound preferences and was able to select it and get sound out of it. I then opened DP and ran a quick test and it worked as well. The next test was to reboot into 64 bit mode. I did that while the Saffire was still connected and it actually stayed mounted and connected upon reboot. I have my System Sound output running through it right now and its still working. I haven't tried DP yet, but will do that later. I'm not going to reboot again until I hear back from Focusrite. I sent in a help request last night.
Hope this helps someone.

Does daisy chaining Firewire 800 drives reduce performance?

Hello,
Based on the recommendation of a very knowledgable Apple Cert. Instructor, I learnt that a very good drive configuration for editing in FCPX is to have 3 separate drives: Boot disk, Events, and Projects. The reason, I suppose, for having the Events and Projects folders on separate drives is because FCPX is constanty reading and writing data into those 2 databases, which would mean that having both databases on one drive strains performance since the drive would have to write all edit changes constantly in the projects folder while reading video footage constantly from the events folder.
That sounds logical so I'll accept it as being true, but here's the intro to my question: I have an iMac (see the specs below) with 1 firewire 800 port, and my extra 2 drives would need to be daisy chained (FW800) to share the 1 port.
1. Does the communication to the two drives suffer for being daisy chained into 1 port, i.e. is the 800Mb/s transfer rate halved between the 2 drives or is full 800 to both at the same time?
2. Does the computer handle the communication with the 2 FW drives via that 1 port evenly so that I takes full advantage of having separate physical disks dedicated to just reading and writing Media and Project data?
It might seem riduculous to go to such Media Management extremes, but FCPX seems to struggle when I get deep into a project and the performance gets sluggish. that's why I'm trying to optimize the workflow.
Thank you,
Reynaldo
System specs: 27" iMac (mid 2010) 2.8Ghz quad-core i5, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5750 with 1GB GDDR5 Memory
External Drives: LaCie D2 Quadra 2TB 7200RPM and Lacie D2 Quadra 3TB 7200RPM

If all the devices in the chain are FW800 then there will be no degradation.
If any of the devices in the chain are FW400 then complete chain drops to FW400 performance.
Allan

Print to Video does not work with Firewire 800 to 400 cable

I need to print video from a Mac Pro with only Firewire 800 port to a Sony DSR 50 with only Firewire 400 port. I'm using a Firewire 800 to 400 cable and I also tried a 400 cable with a 400 to 800 adapter attached. I'm able to control the Sony deck but I cannot get any audio/video to it.
Anyone else have this problem?

When you've got the deck connected and in fcp you go to view: videoplayback, do you see the appropriate apple firewire option available and chosen? And if you hit command-F12 (show all frames) do you see anything? If it doesn't work, try restarting the computer with the deck remaining on.

Does Target Disk Mode work between FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 ports?

Can I mount one as an external volume for the other Mac and vice versa? The one with FireWire 400 port runs on OS X 10.5, and FireWire 800 one has OS X 10.6 installed. If it works, I am thinking of buying an 800-400 adapter.

Can I mount one as an external volume for the other Mac and vice versa?
Yes.
(47103)

Does FCP support 1080i open GOP HDV files?

Hello........
A FCP pre-purchase customer question:
Will FCP support 1080i open GOP HDV for seamless editing ? My capturing device requires it.
My previous NLE has frame errors/stutters that occur when placing two or more .m2t or .mov clips side by side that were captured consecutively on a Firestore Recorder (FS-4 Pro HD).
The Firestore FS-4 ProHD captures 1080i HDV into 9 minute clips ( approx 2GB, but not always the exact same byte size ), which then can be dropped into an NLE timeline and played back seamlessly, one after another. This feature is essential to my multi-cam editing of 2 hour live music performances.
I've gotten approval from Firestore to use FCP, Canopus Edius, or Avid, and I'm willing to give FCP a try if Apple can absolutely confirm before purchasing.
Dual 2 GHz Power PC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

FCS2 doesn't support .m2t files, you will need to use Streamclip to convert if your Firestore device doesn't make .mov files.
http://www.squared5.com/
FCS2 supports long Gop HDV editing,
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Z1&V1user

I currently have a MAC Mini, which has 1 Firewire 800 port. I have a 1TB external hard disk that runs at Firewire 400. Can I insert another external hard drive that runs at Firewire 800?

Here's the deal. Currently running SL 10.6.8 on a MAC Mini. Planning for eventual upgrade to ML. Have a 1TB external hard drive partitioned into two volumes, one volume for Time Machine and one volume for SL which I periodically update using Superduper. Thus I always have a point-in-time bootable backup on the external hard drive.
The MAC Mini supports Firewire 800. However, booting from my current external hard disk is pretty slow, since it only supports Firewire 400. I am considering buying an Iomega MiniMax which supports Firewire 800. Then, I would use the MiniMax as my bootable backup volume, and relegate the older hard drive to Time Machine.
So, question #1 is, can I daisychain the new MiniMax between the MAC Mini and my existing external hard drive? My expectation is that the new Mini Max would run using Firewire 800 and that the existing hard drive would run at Firewire 400 speed as it does today. If it doesn't (e.g., daisychaining in the Firewire 400 external disk with the MiniMax Firewire 800 external disk ends up running the whole leg at 400), my resolution will be to run the existing hard disk off an available USB port and have just the MiniMax running at Firewire 800.
Why am I going to all this trouble? That's question #2. I don't trust upgrades; they always break something. When I upgraded from 10.5.x to 10.6.x, the web directories got renamed, and all of my web apps 403'd until I figured out what happened. Plus, I have accounts for other family members, and in order to ensure their ability to use the computer during my upgrade process, I need to have the ability to fall-back quickly to a known-stable version of OSX. So what I'm trying to do is insulate myself from problems by partitioning the MiniMax into two volumes, taking a Superduper image of my current installation on the Mac Mini to MiniMax external drive volume 1, then upgrading to ML on the MAC Mini, and take a SuperDuper image of that to MiniMax external drive volume 2. Then, if the upgrade results in problems I can't resolve immediately, I can simply reimage the MAC Mini from MiniMax volume 1. BUT ...
... I've read that the ML installation creates a "service and support" partition that is different than the startup disk. I'm concerned that I won't be able to reimage the hard disk in the MAC Mini once I upgrade it to ML because of the partitioning changes it introduces on the startup disk. Theoretically, I +should+ be able to use the disk utility on my SL system to repartition the disk in the MAC Mini prior to reimaging it from my backup, but I'm considering the possibility that the new partition may be of a type that the SL disk utility cannot identify, and might therefore be unable to delete or even detect. So I'm hoping someone else has been down this road and can advise me. Even at Firewire 800 speeds, booting from an external disk is still going to be slow, so I want to be able to restore my SL image to the MAC Mini hard disk.
A little background on me. I work for a major disaster recovery provider. I used to have a Mac PRO G5, which I got used, and the first thing I did with it was install a second hard disk, SuperDupe an image from the first disk to the second, and made sure I could boot from the second. THEN I started using and customizing the MAC. I really feel vulnerable with the MAC Mini, since it only has the single internal hard drive - sort of like going out in public dressed only in a long T-shirt. So my whole thing is, I ABSOLUTELY MUST BE ABLE TO PUT THINGS BACK THE WAY THEY WERE before I do the migration to ML.
Obsessive-cumpulsive? Yep. Anal? You got it. That's why I'm in the DR business.

You may have overloaded the port, following the instructions below it should reset:
+1. Shut down the computer.+
+2. Disconnect all devices and all other cables, except the keyboard and mouse cable(s).+
+3. Disconnect the computer from the power outlet and wait for 3 to 5 minutes.+
+4. Plug the computer back in and turn it on.+
+5. Reconnect the device(s) (one at a time if there is more than one) and test. Test with each port if you have more than one.+
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317?viewlocale=en_US

Can't boot from clone on external firewire 800 drive

Hello,
I have a 24" mid-2007 iMac 7,1 running Snow Leopard. I recently changed my set up to put a clean install of OS X 10.9.1 on a partition of an external SSD. I also moved the 10.6.8 start up system to a partition on the SSD. My internal iMac hard drive now has no system folder, only my data files. I have additional firewire drives for Time Machine, other data and media drives. Finally, I just bought a pair of 3TB drives that I partitioned into enough partitions to be able to clone both operating systems and all my data files for a rotating pair of offsite backups. All moving/cloning of drives was done with version 3.5.4 (Mavericks-compatible) of Carbon Copy Cloner.
I can boot from my external SSD (either Mavericks or Snow Leopard) fine and all external drives mount correctly in either case. After cloning all the partitions onto the backup drives, I tried to test the clones but I am not able to start up using either the Mavericks or the Snow Leopard clones when the backup external drive is connected via firewire 800. This is true whether I select the clone volumes in the Startup Disk preferences pane or hold down the option key during start up (note that the external drive with the clone partitions does not appear in the list of disk choices with the option key method). I get the "question mark in the folder" sign that the start up system is not being found.
I have changed the order in which the external drives are connected (normally the SSD is first in the chain), including trying when only the backup drive is connected directly to the iMac. I get the same result no matter what.
Curiously, the Mavericks and Snow Leopard boot clones start up via firewire 800 when the external backup drive is connected to my wife's 2009 13" Macbook Pro, indicating that the clones and the enclosure (an OWC Mercury Elite Pro quad interface, newer version with USB3) both support booting. Furthermore, if I connect the backup drive to my iMac using USB, the boot clones both work to start up the iMac.
This all points to an issue with the firewire bus failing to recognize the boot clones somehow during my iMac's start up process. I am rather puzzled about how to fix this.
I can get by booting via USB in an emergency but because my system is old, this is of course USB2 so its slow. If I had to use the clones to recover I'd rather be able to operate and restore at FW800 speeds.
If anyone has any ideas what might be going on, I'd appreciate hearing them.
Thanks in advance.
Greg

Did you ever get this resolved, Greg?

Firewire 800 not running as expected. VERY slow

Ok so this is my first post here. I looked all over google and various places but cannot find out whats going on (im also not very computer literate so please bear with me!). Heres my deal:
I am a musician working with garageband and I have always been recording to my internal drive until recently. I was unaware until I read some posts here from the good people like you guys, that that is not a good idea to record to your internal drive. So, I got an external firewire 800 drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001DGZ05A) and this cable (http://www.amazon.com/2M-Firewire-800-9PIN-Cable/dp/B000XQILWK/ref=pdbxgy_e_imgb). When I received it, I first used disk utility and reformatted it for Mac OS Extended Journaled. Then I proceeded to move a couple sample libraries and my entire "Garageband" folder (with my saved songs in it) to the external. I instantly knew something was wrong. The files were taking forever to get written over. It took about 15 mins for a 5GB folder to be moved over. I was already discouraged. Anyway, I plugged in the USB cable that came with the external and tried moving the same files and it was MUCH faster. The same 5GB file was moved over in a matter of minutes.
I then tried recording to the drive (using firewire again) and it would hardly even PLAY the song without stopping every couple seconds (too many effects error, and yes ALL the tracks were locked). Tried to record as well and i'd get even less time before garageband would stop the song with the same error. So I disconnected firewire and went USB. Thru USB the song didnt stop once, not on playback OR recording. Then I moved the songs back to my internal and played them (and recorded) with no problem either. So what gives? I cant figure out if I'm doing something wrong, or if my external HD is bad? Or the cable is bad? Or maybe the firewire port on my mac mini is bad (i've never used it before for anything other than this external drive). Or i'm thinking maybe my processor isnt strong/fast enough to record to the external firewire drive? Im working with a mac mini 120GB internal HD and the 2ghz intel core 2 duo with only 2GB ram (i know thats not ideal for recording and im planning to upgrade at some point, but i have been recording to the internal just fine with the RAM i have now and never had a problem until trying to record to the firewire drive). I was going to go out today and get a new cable and see if that was the cause of it. Anyway sorry for the book-length post! But PLEASE SOMEBODY help me here! ..as i said, im not very computer literate and only just started producing music using computers so please use dummy terms lol ..thanks in advance
P.S. this is my first post so im sorry if I should've posted this in a different category.

Hi,
Are you using an audio Firewire 400 interface (daisy-chained through you external FW800 HDD) ?
I've same problem (mac mini June 2010) so I think it is a compatibility problem between the mac (perhaps only with mini) and some recent Firewire chipsets found in external HDD. I read somewhere that Apple does not support anymore PLX (that acquired Oxford) chipsets for external HDD connected to Mac Pro.
I tried then using the Sonnet Yin Yang adapter (to avoid daisy-chaining), however it is the same :
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=13360117#13360117
The problem does not happen when daisy-chaining through FW400 (from the audio interface to the HDD).
Using the external disk only (FW800), I get up to 60 Mbyte/s sequential write and up to 70 Mbyte/s sequential read (that is using xbench - in memory read, you shouldn't try between two disks as the slower will be the limiting factor). My external HDD is a WD Caviar blue so it also helps.

Ext HD speed and Bus-Powered Firewire 800

After having gone through various External HD over the years, Firewire 800 (WD Studio with power adapter) is by far proving to be best in terms of connecting speed when handling my 350gb+ library.
However, lately, I was exploring the option of having a portable External HD drive with "bus-powered" port so that I don't have to rely on the power plug whenever I want to listen to iTunes library.
So, here are some questions...
1) Bus-powered Firewire 800 1TB - no experience with this before. all my firewire external drives had required power adapter, but during this search I just found out that such exists.
Can MBP Firewire 800 port provide enough power to spin 1TB external drive w/out a hiccup??
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
2) Obviously for a smaller size drive with bus-powered option, I must go with 2.5" drive, which meant, I have either 1TB @ 5400rpm OR 750gb @ 7200rpm for MAX Storage option. I do want 1TB... BUT would 5400rpm / 7200rpm matter when it comes to iTunes library??
I ened up getting my current Firewire 800 external drive after experiencing lagging iTunes speed via USB 2.0 and Firewire 400. But later I found out that slow connecting (constant beach ball when selecting music) is typically resulted from having many playlists/id tags/etc.
So, I want to be sure before I get a new drive, I choose the right speed drive.
Btw, here is my current set up: MBP 13" (mid-2009), iTunes (10.1.2), 500gb 7200rpm internal drive, 8gb memory
Anyone experience with above set-up that I am thinking about??

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
I wonder if there might be a problem with the firewire bridge in the WD? The most reliable Firewire chipset that I know of is the Oxford 924+, but not everybody uses these. You might be able to find out what is actually used on the WD web site.
Since the USB connection works, the WD drive itself is probably fine.
Does your FireWire 800 work properly with other devices? If not, or if you don't know, you could try a SMC reset, which may help if the problem is with the FireWire port on the MBP:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411?viewlocale=en_US
Otherwise, you could try the drive in a different enclosure, like the Mercury on the Go from OWC, which has the Oxford 934 chipset. I have WD drives in 3 of these enclosures, and have never had a problem with any of them.
Good luck!

Does FireWire 800 support 1080i?

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