Importing firewire 400 devices

I previously used Tiger O/S with FCE and FCP. When my HD died and I purchased a new 27" iMAC along with FCP-X. I shoot on a Canon GL-2 (mini DV tape) and it has FireWire 400 ports. What is the best way to get my tapes into FCP-X for editing. This new iMAC does not have any FireWire ports, only ThunderBolt and USB 3.0.
I've "built" a solution, but it's causing sync-ing problems. I have a ThunderBolt adaptor to a FW800 to a FW400, which then connects to my camera. Too much lag creates my audio and video to be out of sync.
How can I get the cleanest footage into FCP-X. Remember, my new iMAC only has Thunderbolt and USB ports, no FW ports.
cheers,
Jack

Not clear how many adaptors are in the connection chain you're describing. They make 4 pin to FW 800, which can then be plugged directly into the Tb/FW 800 adaptor.
If that's what you're doing already, see if you can successfully capture with iMovie or (if you have it) Quick Time Pro.
Good luck.
Russ

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Using the firewire 800 port for my firewire 400 devices

I will be purchasing, at long last, a new mac mini to replace my faithful and well behaved G4 mac mini. I have a 20" cinema display and an external firewire 400 backup drive with the same form factor that sits below the mini. I would like to continue to use these peripherals as well as my video camera DV out. Ideally, it would be cool to have a FW800 hub that had both 800 and 400 places to plug my peripherals, but I don't see that available. Should I get a hub and adaptors for the fw400 components I want to add, or use the hard drive with an adaptor to the mini, then use the FWports on the drive for the monitor, and whatever else I want, thereby using the drive as a hub...
Any advice to this ignorant question would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul

Since Firewire 400 devices still operate at Firewire 400 speeds regardless of whether or not they are connected by adapter to Firewire 800 ports, the best thing to do is just get a Firewire 800 to 400 adapter, and attach it to a Firewire 400 hub known to be able to do all the functions you desire.
Note, migrating to Intel Macs from PowerPC Macs is not as easy as the Migration Assistant, as this user tip explains:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0

Connect Thunderbolt on new iMac to Firewire 400 device

I would like to connect a tape-based camcorder with a (4-pin) Firewire 400 output to a Thunderbolt port on my late 2012 iMac (which has no Firewire ports). Apple sells a Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter (i.e., Firewire 800). I'm thinking I could plug that into a 9 PIN/ 4PIN BILINGUAL FireWire 800 - FireWire 400 Cable from monoprice.com. Should that work, and if so, is it the only/best solution?
Cary

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
That should work without any problem.
If your camcorder has got other connections like USB, I recommend you to use USB instead, so you will save money and there are more possibilities that it works. Also, if it has got a SD card, you can insert it directly onto the iMac without connecting your camcorder

Connect FireWire 800 device to FireWire 400 port?

Hello all,
does anyone know whether it is possible to connect a firewire 800 device (e.g. external Hard Disk) to a firewire 400 port on a e.g. MacBook?
I know only that it works for sure via special fw cable the other way round – FireWire 400 device to FW 800 port.
Cheers,
Gillion

Hi Gillion!
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
My understanding is that with the appropriate cable you can connect a FireWire 800 to a FireWire 400 device and vice-versa.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=4B8 F4B38&nplm=TP320LL/A
The machines will throttle the transfer speed down to an acceptable range for the slower (FW 400) device to communicate effectively.

Daisy-chaining firewire 400 and firewire 800?

I would like to daisy-chain two Western Digital MyBook Pros to a Macbook:
- FW 400 from Macbook to first drive
- FW 800 between the drives
Would this work or not? I have one of those, they have 2 x FW 800, 1 x FW 400, 1 x USB at back.
(If not, I'll buy a 'Premium' which has 2 x FW 400, and 1 x USB..)

JoeyR wrote:
I'm not sure if the hardware in the first drive, that's connected by firewire 400 is "smart" enough to jump the data over to the FW800 connectors for daisy chaining.
Just pulled this from the WD site. I would say this indicates it would work. You won't get more speed but they should work daisy chained. This indicates the drive is smart enough to do this.
+Question: Will Western Digital FireWire 400 (1394a) external hard drives work connected to a FireWire 800 (1394b) port?+
+Answer: The FireWire 800 Specification (1394b) states that FireWire 400 devices will work while connected to a FireWire 800 (1394b) port. The FireWire 400 cable (4-6 pin or 6-6 pin) will not connect to a FireWire 800 port (9 pin) therefore you will need to connect the hard drive using a FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cable (1394a to 1394b cable). These cables are available at most computer stores.+

Firewire 400 port wont work

my issue is... my fire wire 400wont read any firewire 400 device, but my 800 port works fine. however, e wheni route my f 400 devices through my 800 drive, or port, the 800 device is ultimately disengaged ( removed) by the system.
i can understand that a 400 port may be wear out but why would the dv cam or other device, routed through an 800, force the 800 device to shut down. in this case i am uising a power book 15 inch, 1.5 gig, with a lacie porsche 250 gig external 400 firewire ( wont read at all) and a lacie 800 firewire 200 gig drive.
seems to me that since the 800 reads fine, that a 400 device routed through it should be okay too.
any helpwould be greatly appreciated.
also the system profiler doesnt recognize a 400port, but does list an 800 port.
thanks eric

FireWire ports can be reset. Shut down the computer, disconnect all peripheral devices, remove the power cord and the battery. Wait twenty minutes, then restart the computer and check the port. If it still doesn't work, reset the Power Management Unit (PMU) according to the instructions for your specific model.
If neither of these steps help in your situation, then you will need to take the machine in for service.
Good luck!

Do all FireWire 400 audio interfaces work on a FireWire 800 bus?

I have assumed that one can continue to use FW400 on the new MacBookPros with an adapter cable. But responding to a post where I noted that I was unable to daisychain an RME FW 400 to a FW800 harddisk, a forum member tells me that many FW400 audio-interfaces don't work on FW800 buses, and thus even an adapter cable would'nt work.
Is this true?
If so, the whole music/audio community on Mac will have to switch to PC, no other solution.

Although there might be a few specific devices that might have trouble, most firewire 400 devices will work with an adapter to 800. And unlike what a bunch of people on this forum complain about, having a 400 device chained with an 800 WILL NOT slow the 800 down. A few minutes doing some simple research on how firewire works would stop people from spreading incorrect information.

Question pertaining to firewire 400 vs. 800

I am currently in the process of learning the Mac world. I have been using my wife's iBook for sometime and am waiting for things to work out for a new MacBook. So as I embark on my switch over from the Dark-side to Mac I was wondering, if firewire 800 is the new big deal, why wouldn't Apple have used it instead of the 400 in its newest books?
Is there something that I don't know about the actual use of 800 vs. 400, or does Apple possibly know of common problems with the 800 that we don't?
-Al-

I think Apple will remove itself from firewire over time. USB2 and intel is their direction. Firewire 800 is not all that its cracked up to be. Its cretainly not 2x as fast as FW 400. I have all three and mostly use FW 400 because it is the most convinient to use. USB2 on a Mac is significantly slower than on a windows machine although the intel Macs have better USB2 throughput. I'll still use my firewire 400 devices and some time in the future migrate to USB2.

Firewire 400 vs. USB2

Is USB2 better than Firewire400?
When I look at a harddrive from LaCie, the specs says this:
FireWire 400: up to 400Mbits/s (50MB/s)
Hi-Speed USB 2.0: up to 480Mbits/s (60MB/s)
Dos that mean that USB2 always is better than Firewire400, or are there other aspects?

Jakob Rink wrote:
Is USB2 better than Firewire400?
When I look at a harddrive from LaCie, the specs says this:
FireWire 400: up to 400Mbits/s (50MB/s)
Hi-Speed USB 2.0: up to 480Mbits/s (60MB/s)
Dos that mean that USB2 always is better than Firewire400, or are there other aspects?
Those are theoretical raw data transfer rates. Remember that you might have multiple devices on the same node, and many of those devices operate at a slower speed. Only one device communicates at any given instance. USB also has a lot of overhead and negotations to control a device on the bus are performed at a slower rate for compatibility with 12 Mbit/sec (and 1.5 Mbit/sec) devices.
In reality, a single FireWire 400 device will have a higher throughput than a single USB Hi-Speed device (without other devices on the same node). If you read a LaCie spec for actual data transfer rate and not just raw bus speed, you'll see that FireWire 400 is faster. It's also less prone to other devices slowing it down. This was from the specifications for the LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple:
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10922
Burst Transfer Rate1 (max. drive speed) :
FireWire 800: up to 80-90MB/s
FireWire 400: up to 35-40MB/s
USB 2.0: up to 30-34MB/s
So the translation into Mbit/sec is up to 320 Mbit/sec for FireWire 400, and up to 272 Mbit/sec for USB 2.0.

I am using IMovie 11 with a new iMac. Unable to import video from a Panasonic PV-GS400 mini-DV camcorder using a Firewire IEEE 1394 400 cable connected to a Firewire 400 to 800 adapter which is then connected to a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter.

How can I get iMovie to recognize my Panasonic PV-GS400 as a device so I can import video to my iMac? I have a FireWire IEEE 1394 400 cable connected to the camcorder. Since my new iMac has only Thunderbolt ports, I purchased a Firewire 400 to 800 adapter to connect to the cable. I also purchased a FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter to connect to the computer. My camcarder is still not recognized.

I would suggest that you try a 9 pin to 4 pin Firewire Cable along with the Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter.
Those Firewire 400 to 800 adapters do not seem to work well with iMovie.
The 9 pin to 4 pin cables are available at reasonable prices here, for example.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10301&cs_id=1030104 &p_id=3541&seq=1&format=2

Daisy chaining firewire 800 and 400 devices

I am considering purchasing a blue-ray DVD recorder that has two 800 ports and one 400 port. My sony video camera has a firewire 400 connection and I am wondering whether that camera cable may be used to import video using my 400 cable connected to the 400 port. One 800 port would be connected to the computer. Or should I purchase a firewire800 to 400 (4 pin) cable and use the second 800 port on the recorder, or go direct from the computer swapping the cables when importing video?

Hi Charles
If your using the Core Duo with 2 400 ports listed in your profile, then you might be better off just connecting the player up 400 and then using the second 400 port for the camera. If however we are talking about a newer iMac, one with a single 800 port then you will want to connect the recorder up 800 and then the camera up 400 to that.
Also see > http://support.apple.com/kb/TA26476
Dennis

Has anyone use FireWire 400-800 cable to hook up their "old" FW400 devices?

Hello all.
Just wanna find out if anyone has started to use a FireWire 400 to 800 cable to hook up their existing FW400 external devices (like hard drives, etc) to the new Mac mini
Appreciate any feedback, performance. Thanks and cheers

Remember that the external iSight is a discontinued product and apple no longer support it. So they probably only gave the FW bus enough juice to power portable hardrives. Most other FW devices have their own power anyway.
I have seen this behaviour before with FW video capture devices. The manufacturers did not supply a psu with the device but there was a powersocket on the device should your mac not comfortably power the device you were expected to get a PSU or use a powered FW hub.

Can't import video into iMovie 09 (8.0.6) from older Sony MiniDV with Firewire 400.

I have about 2 hrs of video from an oral history, done on my Sony DCR-HC85 MiniDV Handycam. Now I'm trying to upload the video to iMovie '09 (Ver 8.0.6). I could get the iMac system to recognize the videocam via USB, but that only allows uploads from the memory card.
To upload video from tape you have to use the"i.LINK" cable (supplied with videocam). That's a FireWire 400 cable, and my current early-2009 iMac Intel has only a FireWire 800 port. However, one of my external drives is an older Seagate with free FireWire 400 ports, so I'm trying to use one of those.
The iMac does not seem to find the Sony Handycam when I connect it and turn on the camera. My previous iMac PPC with FirwWire 400 ports and earlier iMovie version did so, no problem.
Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks!

apparently Lacie doesn't sell such a cable anymore... http://www.lacie.com/us/products/range.htm?id=10045 ... in any case, as far as I know, these cables do not allow the transfer of video from a camcorder to a computer...
The Macbook doesn't have any expansion card slot unfortunately...

IPad 3 as recording device - How to Connect Firewire 400 from a PreSonus device

Have:
iPad 3 (Apple 30-pin connector)
PreSonus Firestudio (firewire 400 output)
How to connect them?
PreSonus had MIDI as well

PreSonus has MIDI as well (kant spell)

Firewire 400 external device on an MacBoook Pro Firewire 800

I have an external Hard drive a generic 120GB hard drive with a standard Firewire 400 port. I used it as an HFS drive with periodic backups to and from my old Powerbook G4 10.4 before the logic board died. Drive worked 1 month prior to the Powerbook's death.
I purchased a new Macbook i5 10.6.4, a much needed upgrade. Since it has a Firewire 800 port I purchased a 400 to 800 adapter from an online retailer. Once I plugged in the new firewire addapter the drive showed up as expected as a /Volume/Backup112.ZF. However the beach-ball of death showed and I could not read the drive. Terminal I could cd to the volume, but not list. In Terminal Testdisk application (Mentioned later) was able to list disk information as well as diskutil. The firewire would not unmount cleanly. Pulling out the connector only gave a message that drive was not unmounted cleanly and remained mounted... sudo diskutil unmount /Volume/Backup112.ZF did not work. Kill and restart of Finder only crashed the computer. Computer works great and after a hard reboot.
Multiple tries to get a error log got me nowhere. I could post disk information, but that would only show that the drive has read but not write permissions.. I did find multiple postings about using a 10.5 OFirewireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext. I do not have a 10.5 disk to get the file off to download. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136580
There seems to be an indication that Apple knows about the problem? Is there a developers forum where I could read what they are saying on the fix? I have an apple One Account, would it help to get in touch with the advanced staff? I have not seen any firewire problems like this in Unix. Are there any Unix people out there well versed in Firewire? Otherwise, Looks like I will be doing more research...
FYI:
NTFS read/write without software install. This works perfectly in 10.5-10.6 without any issues for my Windows to Mac drive. Too many people make it more difficult then it needs to be. To figure it out, just needed to know Unix.
1. NTFS auto-load read and write enable
sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig
vi /sbin/mount_ntfs
#!/bin/sh
/sbin/mount_ntfs.orig -o rw "$@"
sudo chmod 755 mount_ntfs*
sudo chown root:wheel mount_ntfs*
2. NTFS boot sector fix
TestDisk from http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk.

Well, at least I know that everything SHOULD be working as it did briefly this evening. I'm at a dead end . . .can't think of anything else to try.
Guess I'll just have to pick up another adapter tomorrow and see if that helps.

Importing firewire 400 devices

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