External HD, camcorder and Firewire

Hi,
I have a macbook santarosa with a FIrewire 400/6pin, a camcorder with a Firewire 4pins and the cable that connects them.
I would like to use my new external firewire HD as scratch disk. It comes with many connections: E-sata, usb 2, a firewire 6 pins and two FW 800/9 pins.
The man at genius bar told me that still i needed a Firewire Hub he claimed the camcorder have to be directly connected to the MB....
I really could not have the wohle in a FW cascade connections like that camcorder--> hd--macbook? I thaught i simply need a 4/9 pin cable to connect the camcorder to the disk and a 6/6 pin cable to connec the disk to the MB
tx!

I'd recommend that you stay away from Firewire hubs; they've been known to cause issues with most editing applications, including FCE and FCP. As long as the camcorder isn't a Canon, you should be fine daisy-chaining the camera to the hard drive then the hard drive to your Mac.
-DH

Similar Messages

Help with external hard drive and firewire?

2 questions: 1) Does anyone know if there is a hub made for the firewire 800 to allow more than 1 device to be hooked up at 1 time? ex... capture deck and external hard drive.
2) I was cleaning up my external hard drive. I ejected it and now it won't come back on line when it is plugged in. Any Advice?

Most external FW enclosures have 2xFW800 ports that allow daisy-chaining multiple drives.
There are FW800 hubs available, but I don't recommend them if you intend to use with a camcorder or deck. Ditto regarding daisy-chaining a camcorder or deck with a FW drive ... the camcorder/deck usually locks up the FW bus if you have daisy-chained it with a FW drive.

I recently moved and had to disconnect my WD My Pro Edition II 2TB external drive I had been using for backup. Its been several months and now when i try to reconnect the external dire (Use a firewire cable) it does not recognize the drive is there. I a

I recently moved and had to disconnect my WD My Pro Edition II 2TB external drive I had been using for backup.
Its been several months (many upgrades to the iMac software during this time), and now when I try to reconnect the external dire (Use a firewire cable) it does not recognize the drive is there. I also tried "reloading" software from the Western Digital site, but after following all the instructions, it looks like my iMac doesn't support this software (I can't even locate it after I follow all the instructions.
Thnaks, for anyones ideas on how I can get this working again.....

First of all, you do not really want to use their software; if you want a bootable clone, use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. If you simply want to drag and drop some files, you don't need software to do that. The important thing on any external drive is that you format/partition it correctly (Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and using GUID partition scheme).
Unfortunately, I don't know anything about WD drives or their software, so I don't have any idea what kind of backup you did. Having said that, it should still recognize the external even if it's outdated. Have you tried mounting it manually in Disk Utility? If you can get it to mount, you could (worst case scenario) just drag your stuff off onto your internal and then reformat the external.

I have a Firewire 800 external hard drive and need to connect to my new MacBook Air. Where can I get the correct cable?

I have a Firewire 800 external hard drive and need to connect to my new MacBook Air. Where can I get the correct cable?

Apple has announced a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter, but not yet given a release date.

Daisy chaining external hard drives and a video camera from a single firewire 800 port on my imac

I have only a single firewire 800 port on my imac and want to know if I can daisy chain two external hard drives and my video camera, please? If not is there another solution using USB 2?

Are the external HDs self powered or powered by the FW port? If they are self powered there should not be a problem. If they are port powered they may put a strain on the port's power output but I'n not positive on that.

Editing using a firewire external hard drive and a NTSC television monitor

I have Final Cut Express 2 and use it with a firewire external hard drive and a NTSC television monitor.
I have started to use iMovie with this same set up. I save my iMovie projects to an external hard drive and also have my miniDV deck connected via firewire with the composite outputs going into a 27 inch television so that I can get a better idea of what my colors and title safe framing, etc. look like.
I have had some minor problems with this set up. Like stuttering video, audio tracks playing back when thay are "unchecked" and the "unexpectedly quit" deal.
Thanks in advance!!!
Frank

iM uses a lot of harddrive space on the "start up"/internal disk, even when the project itself is located on some external drive.. make sure, you have at last 10 - 15GB free...
.. and the goo' ol' stutter-problem, in detail discribed by Mastermind Karl Petersen: Stutter in iM5/6, causes and workarounds <<click

IMac G5 and firewire 800 between external drives?

I have a iMac G5 running 10.4.7 which has two firewire 400 ports.
One FW400 port has a Seagate external drive connected, and an iSight is connected to this drives second FW port.
The second FW400 port has a LaCie 250Gb triple interface drive, which has one USB, one FW400, and two FW800 ports.
I'm looking to add a third firewire drive, a duplicate of the LaCie.
I am wondering (before I buy the new drive) if I can connect the new LaCie drive to my existing LaCie with a FW800 cable and have my iMac recognize it.
I'd rather not buy a firewire hub (if such a thing exists) if I can get all three drives and the iSight to mount simultaneously without it.
iMac G5 17" 1.8 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

It did work - chaining the external drives together via FW800, and then connecting one to the iMac via FW400.

I just bought a brand new Cannon GL2 camcorder and I am trying to import...

I just bought a brand new Cannon GL2 camcorder and I am trying to import some video footage into Final Cut Pro version 5.01. Whenever I put up the Log and Capture screen and turn my camcorder on the computer starts to think(the spinning color wheel) and not let me do anything else not even press play unless I completely turn the camcorder off again which defeats the whole purpose of me even importing footage. I don't understand why the Log and Capture screen won't let me import any video my old Sony Digital Hi8 was importing just fine a day ago, but now that I bumped up to the GL2 for some reason the Log and Capture screen isn't doing it's job so well by the computer starting to think(the spinning color wheel) instead of working. I have used the Cannon GL1 in the past and it worked like a charm. So I don't understand why the GL2 wouldn't be any easier? It is just giving me this problem and I don't know wether it's the firewire bus or what? Can someone please help me with my dilemma?

Ha...ha..very funny...but ah yeah from reading other posts on the "Canon" GL2 I figured out that you can't have multiple devices plugged into the firewire bus at the same time while you're importing video into Final Cut Pro. That's a HUGE bummer...thanks guys for your help you where fast and reliant. But now I have another problem my internal hard drive only has 4 GB out of 75 GB and my applications take up at least 40 GB of space. How am I going to connect my 600 GB external hard drive to the computer and import footage at the same time? Can you guys help me with this now?

Can't import from camcorder to firewire drive

I'm having no luck importing video from a digital camcorder to an external firewire drive (using iMovie 6). The playback is OK, but when I try to import the screen quickly goes blue and the importing stops (I get about .5 second of video in a clip before it stops).
This only happens when I'm saving clips to the external drive. If I save the project on my internal hard drive, video imports fine. I've tried with the camcorder daisy-chained through the firewire drive (on my ibook), and plugged into a separate port (on an old iMac w/ dual firewire).
Could it be my firewire drive is too slow to record the video? It's an Acomdata E5, 320gb 400 Mbps drive, formatted Mac OS extended (journaled).
I tried to measure the speed of the disk using Xbench, but not sure how to interpret the results:
Disk Test 34.78
Sequential 26.56
Uncached Write 11.57 7.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 55.80 31.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 31.14 9.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.67 35.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 50.36
Uncached Write 21.41 2.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 97.27 31.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 83.42 0.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 95.71 17.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Are there any settings I can adjust or other things to try?
Thanks for any pointers.
ibook dual-usb Mac OS X (10.2.x)

You don't say which camcorder you're using.
Many Canon camcorders will NOT work properly with anything else, e.g; an external disc, on the FireWire circuit. Sorry. For those, you'd need to import to the internal disc and then copy to the external, and continue editing with the external drive.
"..Could it be my firewire drive is too slow to record the video?.." No: all modern external FW drives are perfectly fast enough, and a 320gb is certainly a modern drive.
"..formatted Mac OS extended (journaled).." ..are you absolutely CERTAIN..? ..It needs to be, otherwise it'll do just as you describe. And even discs bought for Macs or from Mac stores generally come formatted as "PC Exchange", i.e; MS-DOS formatted. Check it again by right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking it and use 'Get Info'. If it really says "Mac OS Extended" you're OK. If not, you'll need to use Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility, select the name of the disc and click the 'Erase' tab (after you've moved off the disc anything which you might want to keep) and then select 'Mac OS Extended'. CAUTION: be sure that you've selected the external drive: don't accidentally reformat and wipe your internal drive!
"..Are there any settings I can adjust or other things to try?.." No. However..
Some camcorders are not properly recognised by iMovie at first. It pays to open a project which already has some footage in it, play that and then attach the camcorder and try importing. Playing back some existing DV footage often - in my experience, anyway - 'kick starts' the program into accepting more footage from the attached device.
But that only works if (a) the drive DEFINITELY is formatted as Mac OS Extended, and (b) you're NOT using a Canon with an external disc..

M-Audio 1814 and FireWire 800

I am working on a MBP and Logic 8, using the Vienna Symphonic Library on external hard drives, one 250 GB LaCie, the second a 500 GB Maxtor. When I use the external hard drives with FireWire 800 first the Audio Interface starts clicking, using Logic 8 the system crashes seriously. If I use the FireWire Hub on the back of my Cinema Display, the 1814 is not recognized.
For the use of the VI-Library I need fast hard drives, the CPU seems not to be the problem. Why I cannot use FireWire 400 (Audio Interface) and Firewire 800 hard drives?

Thank you Chris, I just wonder why Bee Jay can use the HD FW800 with the M-Audio Firewire interface without problems.
I use the ext HD for backup too, but sometimes I need to find something in my backups and I have to turn off the audio interface and copy the files on my internal HD ... then turn off the drive again and turn on the M-Audio ... it's very annoying.
In some forum I read that the problem can be the firewire chipset, but my iMac has the Lucent and the MacBook Pro has the TI (reccomended by M-Audio) ... same problem on both machines.
I did some test:
1) If I use the FW800 external HD and the FW400 with iMovie and my Video Camcorder I have no problem at all. I tried to use the HD at maximum (during a time machine backup I was copying other files and saving the HDV files in the same external HD) and everything works perfectly without loosing a single frame.
2) If I connect the HDV camcorder to the M-Audio interface I cannot even start the capture ... I have to turn off the external FW800 HD.
It looks that the problem is definitely in the M-Audio Firewire driver but unfortunatley the M-Audio e-mail support is only for US customers ... and I'm Italian.
Is there any US customer that has this problem and can insist with the M-Audio support?
Maybe they can solve it in the next release ...
Thank you in advance.

In FCE HD swithing between HD camcorder and SD camcorder problem

I am just starting to go HD. I've got my new Sony HC3 HD camcorder and I've just upgraded my mac to FCE HD. I was able to connect the fireware to the HD camcorder and import the footage just fine when I changed "Easy Setup" to "HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60". The problem is I still want to be able to connect to my Canon Optura Xi SD camcorder. When I change the "Easy Setup" to "DV-NTSC", it can not see the SD camcorder. I've tried every option in the "Easy Setup" dropdown. I think I have tried every combination of exiting FCE HD, rebooting, disconnecting the firewire, turning the camcorder on / off, etc.
When I had FCE 2.0, I never had a problem connecting to my SD camcorder. Now I do. The only other point I want to mention is that no matter what option I select in the "Easy Setup", the "External A/V" error message (the one with the continue or check again option) always says:
"Unable to locate the following external devices:
Apple FireWire NTSC (720 x 480)".
thanks in advance for any help offered

Hi(Bonjour)!
Did you quit FCE HD before unpluging your HC3?
It's always a good idea to do all conections and turn on your camcorder to VCR mode before lauching FCE.
Avoid to plug and unplug differents camcorders in one FCE session.
Try to connect your DV camcorder in a new project and select DV-NTSC or firewire basic (canon camcorder are prone to be "uncontrolable" with DV NTSC ) in easy setup BEFORE creating a new sequence. Now quit, plug your DV cam and re-lauch FCE HD.
For your "warning problem" on startup, check "do not show A/V device warning on lauch" in user preference.
At last, you can trash all 3 FCE HD preference files.
Michel Boissonneault

Sony Camcorder with Firewire & USB to L505-S6946 Laptop eSATA or USB

I would like to use my Sony camcorder's Firewire or USB port to download to my L505-S6946 Toshiba Satellite (Windows 7) laptop but the laptop does not have a firewire port and it is not seeing the camcorder when I try the USB port. The laptop only has USB and eSATA ports. There is no slot for PC or Express cards for a Firewire adapter either.
Is there any way to make the USB or eSATA connection work?
Sony support for Windows 7 says that the drivers for the camcorder are already on the laptop and that USB streaming is not supported. That leaves me with trying to find a way to connect to the eSATA port on the laptop. Any help on getting the camcorder to download to the laptop would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Join the club. I've been searching for a while without much luck. Right now there appears to only be one company which makes a Firewire to USB cable. Good luck finding a place that sells it though.
http://www.pixela.co.jp/en/products/tv_capture/pix_uvcd_u1w/index.html
There are apparently USB/Firewire hubs like this one from IOGear but I have yet to find one that allows for only a USB connection on the computer side, so far they all appear to require a firewire port on the computer in additon to the USB port. Hopefully there is a device out there at relatively low cost that will allow for firewire to usb for those laptops (of which there are more and more) that don't have a firewire port or a cardbus/pcmcia slot.
What I've been doing in the mean time is to use a desktop compter with a firewire card to capture the video, then transfer (via network or external hard drive) to the L505 to do further editing from there. I didn't think that not having a firewire port would be an issue when I bought the laptop but it became one.

Record video from camcorder and separate sound source direct to mac?

Hi. I want to make a video of myself playing piano (or whatever) with high quality sound. I bought a nice Panasonic mini-dv camcorder with a mic input, firewire, and USB for the job. Unfortunately the sound is ruined by the camcorder's compression kicking in and spoiling the quiet parts. Apparently the compression can't be turned off.
What would be ideal would be to record straight to the Mac with the video coming from the camcorder and the sound coming from my high quality mics. I could send the sound either as analog or already converted via firewire or lightpipe.
Help?

I'm running two serious condenser mics into a "board", panning one left and one right and sending them out stereo into the camcorder. Even with external mics the audio compression still kicks in and tries to bring up the quiet parts, which not only destroys the dynamics of the music, it brings the noise floor way up so that it's quite audible.
My camcorder is a Panasonic PV GS65, which in 2005 was the cheapest 3CCD camera they made. The video is quite good but very few cheaper camcorders have mic inputs, let alone manual record levels.
I've never tried making movies before but after messing with Windows Movie Maker for a few minutes I've discovered that all I have to do is plug my camcorder into a firewire port and I'm ready to go.
It turns out that whether I use Mac or PC for video, I won't need the mic input in the camcorder after all. I'll record the audio into Logic Pro 8 as I shoot the video and one way or the other I should be able to sync them up pretty close.
My question still remains however: Is it possible to record the sound straight onto the video file from a separate source while shooting the video? Or is it only possible to record the one firewire source from the camera?

JVC Hard Drive Camcorder and DVDs

I have a G4, and i am interested in purchasing a JVC Hard Drive Camcorder. I will be recording church services overseas, each being about 2 hours a night, six nights in a row. My main concern is getting the content from the camcorder to the computer. I believe it has USB connections, not FireWire. I do not need to make a movie in iMovie, because I have Final Cut Express, and any editing or movie making would be done in this program. Final Cut, says that it can use MPEG-2 format, but I want to be able to burn the content to a DVD, clean the hard drive, and record each service with the hard drive blank.
I have never used iDVD, or iMovie, because of Final Cut. So, the question is, do I need to take the G4, take a PC laptop that can burn DVDs, or just buy the DVD burning station for 200 bucks, that serves the DVD burning purpose? I am getting this camcorder, but I need to know what I will have to do to get it to a DVD, and then to Final Cut.
I also am aware that my sound quality may not be very good, because the JVC has no line inputs, so I would match up the video to an audio recording of the services if needed.
Please help and let me know what my options are, as well as the hurdles I will have to overcome.

IMO, this type of camera is not a wise choice. FCE will work with pretty much any DV camera and not the JVC hard drive stuff or DVD based cameras. That being said you could fudge it into FCE indirectly. Search this forum for solutions, there is plenty of discussion already here.
I would strongly advise having a camera with external audio input and couple it with a quality mic or even input the audio to the camera directly from the inhouse sound mixer. Another solution to sound is a quality radio mic and transmitter.
Syncing up the sound from a separate source can be quit tricky if at all with success.
Al

20" Cinema display with USB and firewire ports not working

I have a new 20" display and was wondering why my USB and fire wire ports at the back are not working. I have an external drive that is powered hooked up to the fire wire port and a no powered piano keyboard to a usb port.
Any help please

Verify that the display’s USB and FireWire cables are firmly plugged in to the
computer. Do they show in your profiler?
Try different ports in the computer.
Verify that your computer ports are working with other known problem free device.

External HD, camcorder and Firewire

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for