Posted by Michaelv on 09/25/05 04:11

Thanks, I think I'll try to get a PCMCIA firewire adapter.

If one is using a combo firewire/USB2 external hd for capture from a laptop,
is the firewire link less likely to result in dropped frames than the USB2
link?
>>
>> 1. Is the external hd fast enough for video capture? It has more space.
>
> I routinely use external Firewire drives for capturing and editing. Your
> mileage may vary, but I've never had any problems.
>
>>
>> 2. If I want to use the external firewire drive for capture, I have to
> plug
>> the external drive into the laptop and then piggy back the camcorder onto
>> the external drive's second 1394 socket. I tried capturing this way, but
> the
>> audio seemed more hashy when the firewire bus was extended this way (I
> think
>> each firewire cord was about 6 feet).
>
> Whereas I have run into the occassional problem doing what you're
> describing. I use a dedicated 1394 port for capturing from the camera,
> and
> a separate port for external drives. Perhaps you could a 1394
> pcmcia/cardbus adapter?
>
>>Does extending the firewire bus make
>> things more noise vulnerable? Should I invest in a PCMCIA firewire card
>> in
>> order to get more onboard firewire inputs?
>
> That's the only way I was able to reliably capture to my system (a 3.2 GHz
> P4 desktop).
>
>>
>> 3. Would it be better for real-time activities such as capture to be
>> confined to the internal hd, and then move the capture file to the more
>> spacious external hd for non-realtime activities such as editing?:
>
> If you're capturing DV-25, external drives shouldn't be a problem. I have
> 5
> internal drives (4 for data), an external USB drive and an external 1394
> drive, for a total of 1.25 terabytes. I see no difference between the
> internal or external drives PROVIDED that I don't also try to use the same
> 1394 port for capturing from the camera.
>

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