DVCPro HD transfer through FireWire 800

Hi there,
I'm planning on connecting an external DVCProHD tape deck to capture footage using Final Cut Pro through the 800 port, then chaining a LaCie drive via an adapter to catpure the footage on to this external drive. So essentially, a FireWire 800 2-port adapter plugged into the single 800 connection in the MBP.
Do any of you know what impact this amount of data will have on the drive? I'm obviously keen to avoid frame drop-out and want to maximise the speed of the drive, although I'm wary of connecting both inputs via the 800 adapter through the single port.
Thanks, Mark

Hi Robert,
Thank you for your response.
I probably wasn't clear enough sorry! I am hoping to hook in a FireWire 800 adapter, maybe something like this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Port-FireWire-800-Repeater-Hub/dp/B000OZ68KW/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1279624822&sr=1-1
Into this, I will connect both the DVCPro HD deck and the external LaCie drive. My main concern is running both these devices through the adapter, as it's essentially using one 800 port for both data streams.
Is this something that is feasible? Am I right in saying that this will data stream will be quicker than hooking the drive in via USB?
Thanks,
Mark

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Capturing to a FireWire 800 drive

Hi, first off, a little on the devices...
Computer:
Powerbook G4
Mac OS 10.4.5
1 GB RAM
80 GB HDD
Final Cut Studio 5.0.4
Camera:
Canon GL2 DV camera connected through FireWire 400 directly to the computer (not daisy chained through a FW800 device)
Hard Drive:
Lacie Big Disk Extreme connected through FireWire 800 directly to the computer
The issue:
When I set my external as the capture scratch in Final Cut Pro and try to capture, I keep getting dropped frames. In the past, I can capture to my Powerbook's internal hard drive from the same camera, and I've been able to capture to external FireWire 400 drives on my G4 Tower, so I know it's not an interface speed problem.
From what I hear, hooking up two devices through the same bus (not interface or port, but bus) will lower the bus speed to the lowest common demoninator, and that DV cameras operate at 200 Mbps, half the speed of FW400 drives. Looking at System Profiler, all Firewire elements are lumped under one "FireWire Bus", making me think that a single bus controls both the FW800 and FW400 interfaces. It's a triple interface drive, so so far I've been relegated to capturing to the drive through it's USB2 interface while the camera occupies the FW bus. I find it a mite bit hilarious that USB is the only interface on my system fast enough to capture to without dropped frames. So have a multi-part question here, any answers to any parts would be wonderful.
a) Did I get my definition of a bus right?
b) Is it true that the Powerbook only has a single bus controlling all FireWire interfaces?
c) Is that a standard thing? Or does a Powermac G5 have independent busses?
d) Is it really true that connecting a 200 Mbps DV camera to the computer will slow down even FW800 to 200Mbps?
e) Is there any way I can use Firewire 800 to capture or am I relegated to USB for the rest of my capturing life?
Thank you in advance for your help!
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

"USB 2.0 has higher burst rates than Firewire, but it doesnt have what's called Isochronous Transactions. Isochronous Transactions are a reserved bandwidth data transmission mechanism. They provide a guaranteed rate of delivery with a guaranteed latency. This is necessary in a video stream environment. No one here has ever reported success with a USB drive."
and:
Now although USB 2.0 seems to be a lot faster than Firewire (480 megabits per second vs 400 megabits per second), it is only burst speed; the rate at which data can be transferred for a short period of time. Burst speed are generally higher than sustained speeds. Firewire on the other has transfer rates at sustained speed; the rate at which data can be transferred continuously. This is due to the difference in the chip design. This is also why Firewire is preferred when it comes to high speed peripherals like camcorders, digital cameras or hard disks.
Don't have the original sources from which these were extracted, but better to be safe than sorry.
Video capture: Fiirewire-yes, USB-no.
(unless you have P2 cards

Time Machine backup problems with firewire 800 since Mavericks

Since I installed Mavericks about a week ago, I have had problems with TM not working with my LaCie external drive. At best, it would not back up when the mac was awakened from sleep mode and in use. When I would open time machine preferences, I would see the "preparing for back up" prompt that would last forever. Not only was it doing that, I have found that it would freeze my mac. I figured this out when I was not able to get my mac to respond from the login screen. It was basically frozen and couldn't log on. I noticed the back up drive light flickering but nothing would happen even with waiting a long time. I finally figured out that shutting off the TM EHD would unfreeze the mac and it would start functioning normal again. This was happening with my external HD daisy chained to another external drive that contains my iPhoto, iMovie and Itunes files. That drive was also connected to the mac using firewire 800. I tried many different configurations, switched the order the drives were daisy chained, tried different cables and even directly connected the TM drive with firewire 800 to the mac, but the problems still persisted. The strange thing is that when I connect the TM drive through USB, it works flawlesly and no hanging up of the computer. Thats what Ive been forced to do. I have my other EHD connected directly through firewire 800 and it works fine. I only have one firewire 800 port, and since it works fine with my other LaCie drive, it makes me think its not the port or macs hardware? I can only guess this is a Time Machine issue or something wrong with my TM drive? I have been in contact with LaCie and given them all these details but I have not heard back yet on what they feel the problem is. I thought I would post this to see if anyone else had some experience with this problem.

Forgot to mention I did that. Completely erased and reformatted HD and then reconnected to TM. Didn't help. I did have the mac hang up while installing Mavericks and had to eventually shut off the external drive. It did that to me the firs time I tried to install Mavericks and I lost all my data because it did a clean install after that. I had another back up on CCC so I just restored from there. This time the update to Mavericks transferred my data. I have had TM hang up my mac in the past on occasion, but I was always able to shut down the drive and then the mac would return to normal. Perhaps I should try to erase and reformat again?

FireWire 800 bug in 10.4.9, 10.4.10 and higher? Leopard?

Hi there,
I'm not completely sure if this topic belongs in here, so sorry if it doesn't. I hope Apple reads these forums too...
I have a MacBook Pro 2.33 Ghz 15", running Tiger 10.4.10.
I bought a LaCie d2 Quadra 500 GB to be able to backup my data better and faster with FireWire 800. But while my other 2 LaCie-drives work perfectly through FW 800, this drive doesn't mount and Tiger tells me to initialize it, because it can't be read. Initializing doesn't help, DiskUtility isn't able to do anything with the drive and DiskWarrior tells me there's something wrong with the drive.
The drive works perfectly through both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0. When I boot my MacBook Pro from another external drive with Tiger 10.4.8, the drive also works perfectly through FireWire 800 and when I boot my MacBook Pro from the Installation-DVD.
I updated my other external drive to 10.4.9 and then the drive could not even be mounted when booted from the other external drive.
I had never tried something like the following before, but I tried to move some older extentions from 10.4.8 to 10.4.10 and was able to mount the drive through FW 800, but not without warnings that the extentions were not installed correctly. So I downloaded Pacifist and tried to see which extention would be the problem...
I have spent many many hours, but wasn't able to find the specific extention, but when I was about to give up, I used Pacifist to move the following extentions from my Installation-DVD to the system on my internal drive:
- IOFireWireAVC.kext
- IOFireWireFamily.kext
- IOFireWireIP.kext
- IOFireWireSBP2.kext
- IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext
- AppleFWAudio.kext
And 1 FrameWork:
- FWAUserLib.framework
And it worked. The drive shows up through FireWire 800 at last. While I'm very happy about it, I'm also affraid that the next update to 10.4.11 breaks it again... And what about Leopard...
Please Apple, will you please have a look at this, so that it works again with the latest updates and under Leopard, because I want to use this drive for Time Machine as soon as Leopard arrives. Thanks.
Best Regards,
JeePee

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Why that probably works is that the installation DVD files are unalterable. Chances are the reason why your problem manifested itself in the first place is that your devices hooked up via Firewire either have a firmware update that is too old to be recognized, or data corruption in those particular files you pulled over. The updates themselves don't break Firewire. The vendors who haven't tested their firmware with the latest operating system is what breaks it, and corrupt data files break it. Trying to tell the difference between the two is difficult. LaCie's Mac support is firewire AT lacie.com. Contact them and ask if their drives that are your model have been tested to work with 10.4.10. If they have, then you have some evidence your files got corrupt somehow. If they haven't, you can be sure that they made a mistake in trying to follow specs with their last firmware update.

Connect G-Tech Drive: FireWire 800 or USB 3.0?

Hi,
I am just setting up my new G-Tech 2 Tb external hard drive.
It is my third: the other two are connected through FireWire 800 in a daisy chain.
This new one has an USB 3.0 option.
USAGE:
1. extended hard drive space for my retina MBP 500 GB hard drive. Once section will contain RAW files (photos), another video shot with the 5D mark III.
2. one patition will be a bootable clone, made with Carbon Copy Cloner, with regular backups.
Question 1: Shall I connect it via USB 3.0 - or add it to the daisy chain to the older G-Techs via FW800?
Question 2: I already have a lot of device connected to my only 2 usb ports on my Retina MacBook Pro (I'm using those rather cheap, small Belkin docks). If I would connect the G-Tech hard drive via a Belkin USB dock to the USB 3.0 port on my MBP - would this work, or would the dock make trouble?
I have never used a USB 3.0 device, so this would be important information for me.
thanks!

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My brother and I recently purchased an OWC 100GB hard drive with firewire 800 and usb 2.0. My hard drive is working perfectly, being bus powered through firewire 800. However his computer isn't powering up the hard drive. We both have the same laptop, powerbook 15' 1.5 ghz w/1gb ram. I plugged his external hd into my laptop and it powered up just fine. It seems the problem lies with his laptop's firewire 800 port. I repaired permission, checked system profile and it shows the firewire 800 port, and reinstalled the os x update 10.4.6. We also plugged in the supplied ac adapter for the external hd and it did work with his laptop. Has anyone had trouble with the firewire 800 port now powering devices? Everyone's help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Try resetting your power management unit (PMU), directions are at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449 That can sometimes fix that type of issue.

I need to connect my old Mac book pro to the new one to transfer files. The old one doesn't have Thunderbolt 2 and the new one doesn't have Firewire 800. Will the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter or Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter work?

I want to transfer data from my old Mac book pro to my new one using migrate. The old computer doesn't have Thunderbolt 2 and the new one doesn't have Firewire 800. Does the Thunderbolt to Firewire or the Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter work to connect them and transfer data?
Thank you!

Yes, use a Firewire cable and the FW to Tbolt adaptor.

Very slow transfer speeds with external hard drives through Firewire and US

Hi All,
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little. Apple support suggested I post my issue here. Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
Thanks in advance.

Hi Kappy, thanks for the information.
So I rejigged my setup a tad. My RAID 0 is still FW800, the second drive is back on FW400 on the back port, and the third is USB 2.0 on the back as well.
It's interesting to note that I saw the FW800 taking a bandwidth hit if the FW400 drives was being read/written to. For example, if I was averaging 50-60MB/sec on the FW800 drives and copy something large to the FW400 drive, each drive averages out to about 30/MB second, roughly half the FW800 speed I was getting. The USB while the slowest didn't cause any slowness on the FW drives.
Here are my Xbench results. These results are from each drive being benchmarked individually with no other drives being tested at the same time.
*MyBook 2TB in a RAID 0 configuration: Firewire 800*
Results 75.42
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 75.42
Sequential 80.92
Uncached Write 69.16 42.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 110.79 62.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 53.66 15.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.76 68.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 70.62
Uncached Write 36.38 3.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 140.55 45.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.26 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.38 16.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 1TB on Firewire 400*
Results 47.73
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 47.73
Sequential 52.47
Uncached Write 48.45 29.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 53.76 30.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 43.69 12.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.91 35.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 43.78
Uncached Write 17.29 1.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 98.83 31.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 76.33 0.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.01 18.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 500GB on USB 2.0*
Results 40.60
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD 5000AA External
Disk Test 40.60
Sequential 35.99
Uncached Write 37.31 22.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 37.22 21.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 26.62 7.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 50.27 25.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 46.55
Uncached Write 20.37 2.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 68.44 21.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.55 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 86.71 16.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
So Kappy are you saying that those speeds look normal?
Thanks

I have a Power Mac G4 (2004) and want to transfer all my files to a new MacBook Pro 15.4". Can this be done thru firewire cable or do I have to transfer to an external Firewire 800 hard drive first?

I have a Power Mac G4 (2004) and want to transfer all my files to a new MacBook Pro 15.4". Can this be done thru firewire cable or do I have to transfer to an external Firewire 800 hard drive first?

Do it with a Firewire cable (buy a 800/400 adapter if you need it) - the USB transfer takes a much longer time.
Start up your old PowerMac G4 holding down the "T" key, for target disk mode.
On your new MacBook Pro open "Migration Assistant" in your utilities folder.
Connect the 2 computers by firewire cable and follow the prompts in Migration Assistant.

I need to transfer information through firewire cable and could not remember how it works, please, help

Please help, I need urgently to transfer information through firewire cable and I could not remember how it was that I do it. I've connected the computers and restarted one of them by pushing T on startup but it did not work.

Shut down both Macs. Connect them via FW cable.
On the Mac you want to copy FROM. Start up but make sure you are holding down the T key as soon as you press the power button. And keep holding down the T key until the FireWire emblem appears on the screen - that's the indicator that the Mac is in Target Disk Mode (TDM). Note: if you release the T key too soon the Mac won't go into Target Disk Mode.
Start up the second Mac. The first Mac will appear in the Finder as a disk. You can use the Finder to copy whatever you want from the Mac that's in TDM.
When you're done, shut down both Macs. The Mac that's in Target Disk Mode can be shut down by holding down the power button until it turns off.

Slow large file transfer speed with LaCie 1T firewire 800 drives

I am transferring two large files (201gb and 95gb) from one LaCie 1T firewire external drives to another one (using separate connections to a PCI Express firewire 800 card in my Quad G5. The transfer time is incredibly slow – over for hours for the 201gb file and over 2 hours for the 95gb file.
Does anyone have any ideas why this is so slow or what I might try to speed up the transfer rates?
Thank you.
G5 Quad 2.5 8GB DDR2 SDRAM two SATA 400GB Mac OS X (10.4.5)

You posted this in the Powerbook discussion forum. You may want to post it in the Power Mac G5 area, located at http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=108

IPod Transfer Rate Slow Through FireWire

Hey I have this iPod 40gb (4 generation) Photo, and whenever I hook it up to my PowerMac G3 (B&W) with 350MHz, 512mb ram,with 10.4.9 computer through firewire it is as slow or slower than USB 1.1. It goes at about 500mb in about 10-20 minutes, when it only should take several minutes. Its gone faster at times, but i don't know whats gone wrong. I have USB 1.1 on the comp and its a bit faster when FireWire is slow, but otherwise FireWire is slow. COuld this be a problem with the Firmware?

Ya the Cube only had USB1.1 ports, so you are looking at a long time to transfer. USB1.1 is an absolute max of 12Mbps = 1.5MB/sec = 90MB/min. But that is a number that would rarely be reached, so your 20MB/min is probably not far off the mark for long term sustained transfer speed.
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Digitizing **** - FCP 4.0 and a DVCPRO 50 deck/external FW 800 drive

In digitizing ****. Working on documentary project shot 720x480p @24fps. DVCPRO 50, coming in through the deck's firewire. Then to external 500gig drive, firewire 800. Everything worked fine, digitzed 10 tapes. Then someone added another firewire drive and a router, connecting the two drives through the Belkin router. First error symptoms: using digitize now - system freezes on allocating disc space. Makes phantom file size of all usable space. Second error symptom: if you pick a clip and log it and then digitize the clip - initially it all froze up on first frame. After changing some preferences (the abort on dropped frames) I can now get it to digitize 5 minute clips - system takes between 5 and 35 seconds to begin digitizing. Sometimes sound files are way off sync. (I am digitizing to same file, though I normally do not do that). On longer files, system will freeze up on first frame. Have to force quit computer not FCP to get out.
Of course I unplugged all the peripherals. Maybe it was the external drive, so I digitized directly to 160gig system drive - same symptoms, although this is the drive I am using now to get in the 5 minutes clips.
Of course, I need to digitize something from a DVD, and running it through the deck FCP sees the video, but forced to use digitize now it won't work.
I have not trashed the plist file, I just found out about that, but not convinced that is it. No clues, either.

see if this addresses your issue
Shane's Stock Answer #10: ALLOCATING DISKSPACE
1) Set a limit on Capture Now. Never have that box unchecked. Set it to 60 min if you want the whole tape.
2) Do not under any circumstances run any anti-virus/filesaver software. Including Norton and Virex. Sure, Apple doles out Virex for free, but FCP doesn't cooperate with it very well.
If you absolutely feel you must keep Virex installed on your system then use Kevin's script to shut it off before you use FCP:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?[email protected]@.68a85d17
3) Do not capture to your main system drive.
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Connecting Canon HV30 to New Macbook pro with firewire 800

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Can you connect Firewire 400 to Firewire 800?

Have had a Powerbook Titanium G4 and just got a new MacBook Pro. The TiBook has an 800FW port, the TiBook only a 400FW port. Can I connect the two directly? Is there a 400 to 800 adapter cable? I'd like to transfer files fast between the machines.
Currently I transfer files through an external hard drive that has both 400 and 800 ports. But it sure would be easier if I could get the TiBook to run in FW target disc mode with the MacPro. Any other suggestions for linking the machines?

Hi
There's a couple of ways to do it:
One solution is to get an Expresscard (e.g. Belkin Firewire 400 which gives you an extra two ports). I bought one of these and then went and misplaced it!
Rather than buy another Expresscard, I bought a Firewire 800/400 cable (cheapo/no name, I'm afraid) from a small computer shop - it was a quarter of the price of the Belkin and works fine. I also got a small adaptor plug so I that I can connect connect my camcorder.
Of course, I found the ExpressCard a couple of days ago...
You could connect the computers by an Ethernet cable, too.
Hope that helps.
OBG

DVCPro HD transfer through FireWire 800

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