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new laptop, no firewire

PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:12 pm
by Bobtheduck
http://www.cooldrives.com/esata-firewire-800-enclosure-case-external.html

All this mentions is connecting an eSata drive to a USB or Firewire port.

I got a new laptop... It has neither a firewire port nor an expresscard port, but it does have an eSata port. Could I use this to connect my videocamera to the new laptop via the eSata port?

PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 6:04 pm
by shooraijin
Not that I'm aware of, unfortunately. FireWire is starting to disappear, which is sad IMHO.

PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 8:56 pm
by Mithrandir
I don't think you'll be able to wire FW into an esata port. esata is basically just an external connection to the internal SATA dive bus.

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 8:36 pm
by Bobtheduck
shooraijin (post: 1377323) wrote:Not that I'm aware of, unfortunately. FireWire is starting to disappear, which is sad IMHO.


Isn't firewire 800 faster than USB 2?

The ONLY capture devices (video cameras, VCRs, whatever) Premiere accepts are firewire devices. My camera is also firewire, with no USB or other output (except for RCA cables... no digital output, I should say)

There is a plate on the laptop covering what should have been the expresscard port... I thought maybe it was something that just had to be taken off, so I pried it off and there's nothing underneath and I can't get the plastic piece back on properly. Just one of a string of stupid things I did over this weekend, the first of which was buying that laptop...

PostPosted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 9:25 pm
by Mithrandir
Trying to accent an "e" in passé just ate a very large post. The salient points were:

USB 2 is probably a bit faster if you are reading a lot of small files.
FW800 is probably faster if you are reading a few very large files.
Other wise, it's likely a wash, practically speaking.

As for devices, half of me is upset that FW is going away, but the other half of me is OK with it. I mean, USB3 is on the way in. How long will it be before someone builds a USB3 to FW800 adapter? That way you can add FW800 support to just about new device. There are only a few years of in-between boxes that will not be supportable. Unfortunately, it looks like you've acquired one. >.<

Unlike shooby, I don't really hang on to out-dated gear. It's not that the new gear is that much better, but I don't have the time to give the old gear all the love it needs to run smoothly. In any event, the loss of SCSI hasn't really hampered me all that much, and I suspect the loss of FW probably won't either. That's only my opinion, though.

PostPosted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 9:48 pm
by Ingemar
But my camcorder can only connect via FW....

*whimper*

PostPosted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:00 pm
by Bobtheduck
For me, it's not even that my camcorder is only firewire (though that's huge) it's that premiere is firewire only for capturing. Even if I get a working adapter that doesn't just rewire the firewire connections directly into USB connections (which do exist, though... why? You can't connect camcorders with them) will still register as being a USB device, therefore not capturable on premiere, unless it tricks the computer into registering it as a firewire port (which may not be impossible, I guess) I can't capture on premiere. The issue is, premiere is my editing program. It works wonders with its own captures, but using captures from other software (like Movie Maker, for instance) not so much.

For now, my other laptop is usable, but I got the new one to replace the old one, because I don't think it's got much more life left in it.

PostPosted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 6:12 am
by shooraijin
[quote="Mithrandir (post: 1377812)"]Trying to accent an "e" in passé]

I would be very surprised if an FW<->USB converter ever emerged. Remember that FW is more like SCSI than USB is. USB requires a host, whereas FW devices can talk amongst themselves, and FW can saturate the bus whereas USB devices only talk when they're spoken to by the host and must yield in round-robin. The bus philosophies are wholly different.

Then there's the question of bus power ...

PostPosted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 7:34 pm
by Mithrandir
I was thinking of an externally powered box with a software component as well. Doesn't seem *that* tough to me, but I could certainly be wrong.

PostPosted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 2:40 am
by Warrior4Christ
Mithrandir (post: 1377812) wrote:Trying to accent an "e" in passé just ate a very large post. The salient points were:

USB 2 is probably a bit faster if you are reading a lot of small files.
FW800 is probably faster if you are reading a few very large files.
Other wise, it's likely a wash, practically speaking.

As for devices, half of me is upset that FW is going away, but the other half of me is OK with it. I mean, USB3 is on the way in. How long will it be before someone builds a USB3 to FW800 adapter? That way you can add FW800 support to just about new device. There are only a few years of in-between boxes that will not be supportable. Unfortunately, it looks like you've acquired one. >.<

Unlike shooby, I don't really hang on to out-dated gear. It's not that the new gear is that much better, but I don't have the time to give the old gear all the love it needs to run smoothly. In any event, the loss of SCSI hasn't really hampered me all that much, and I suspect the loss of FW probably won't either. That's only my opinion, though.


Isn't it:
Firewire 400Mbit/s
USB 2.0 480Mbit/s
Firewire 800Mbit/s
USB 3.0 4.8Gbit/s
?

Thus Firewire 800 should theoretically be a fair bit faster than USB 2.0?

Also, surely it would make sense to not phase out Firewire yet until the USB 3.0 adapters are well-established in the market?

PostPosted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:47 am
by Bobtheduck
Mithrandir (post: 1377970) wrote:I was thinking of an externally powered box with a software component as well. Doesn't seem *that* tough to me, but I could certainly be wrong.


I've seen those for FW400 to USB 2.0. They don't make them anymore, from what I've seen. Plus, you know, my being in Korea and no one understanding what I mean when I say "firewire"

They also apparently didn't work with Vista. Probably won't work with 7 if that's the case. Even so, those captures don't work with premiere...

SO what I need is an external device under 200 dollars that can capture from firewire into DV-AVI and output via USB 2.0... Any ideas?