Daisy-Chain Or Not For Video Editing

[TenderBranson]

I'll make this as brief as possible.

I have a 15" 1.5ghz powerbook and an 160 GB Lacie D2 Extreme external hard drive. I would like to capture all my DV footage to that external drive.

Since I connect the external hard drive through my FW800 port, I still have a FW400 port available.

So here's my question.
Would I get better performance daisy-chaining my camcorder to my external drive or connecting it directly to the powerbook?

Keeping in mind that in either scenario my footage is going saved onto the Lacie, does anyone have enough knowledge in this issue to offer an opinion?

 

[cpjakes]

My guess it that the computer has to process the information so it can be written to disk. So I wouldn't daisy-chain it as each port should be a different bus. If you daisy-chain, you'll be sending the data in both directions on the same bus.

Don't know if it's right, but it's my initial reaction on the topic...

cpjakes

 

[HiRez]

Yeah, I wouldn't chain your FireWire devices if you can avoid it. Theoretically, FireWire has plenty of bandwidth to handle what you're doing (DV video only needs less than 40 Mbps for on stream), but I've had problems with dropped frames with a chained FW drive and video device. You could try it though, it might work fine on your system. Might depend on the speed of your FW drive, mine was kind of crappy.

 

[pdpfilms]

When I was editing on my PB I daisychained a FW400 drive with my DV camera. I never noticed any difference between that and a non-daisy chain config. You should be fine either way... don't sweat it if you do daisy chain, but might as well use the extra port if it's open.