FW 800 HDV cable?

[motomac]

Hey guys. I have a JVC HD-1 High Def miniHDV camera and I need to buy a Firewire cable to hook up to a mac to start editing.

The camera manual says that I need to get a FW cable that will plug into it (mini i-link connection on the camera end) and a regular FW end on the other, but it did not specify if I should get a FW400 cable, or a FW800?

As far as I have known, you can only get a FW400 cable for video transfers between a computer and a video camera. Is the FW400 cable fast enough to handle the HDV transfer without dropping frames or quality? Is there a FW800 cable that is made for HDV transfers and has a iLink FW connector on one end for the camera?

I'm gonna be getting a FW800 external HD soon (between 500 gigs and 1TB), so id like to daisy chain the camera to the external HD so that I loose as little quality as possible (maybe none at all!).

What do ya'll think?

I know there are others who have ran into this before, so speak up!!

 

[bigbossbmb]

That "mini iLink" is just a 4-pin FW (400) connection. you will gain nothing by hooking it up to a FW800 port. FW400 is plenty fast for 25Mbps HDV (which is what you'll be shooting).

DO NOT DAISY CHAIN YOUR CAMERA AND HD!

That is how you drop frames. Hook up the camera to the computer's FW400 port and the hard drive to the FW800 port and you'll be fine. You don't lose quality (at all) when capturing the tape to the hard drive, that's the benefit of digital (it's all just 1's and 0's).

 

[motomac]

That "mini iLink" is just a 4-pin FW (400) connection. you will gain nothing by hooking it up to a FW800 port. FW400 is plenty fast for 25Mbps HDV (which is what you'll be shooting).

DO NOT DAISY CHAIN YOUR CAMERA AND HD!

That is how you drop frames. Hook up the camera to the computer's FW400 port and the hard drive to the FW800 port and you'll be fine. You don't lose quality (at all) when capturing the tape to the hard drive, that's the benefit of digital (it's all just 1's and 0's).

Thanks bigbossbmb! Thats what I needed to know!

 

[macormac]

You might've gotten some answers by now on your firewire cabling issues. However, i'll try to add some light on to it. On the cam end, it's clear that you need iLink cable. On the desktop end, you will need to check what the machine has. The 08 imac has both 400 and 800 females. So you can choose either one. The 09 imac drops the 400 and only carries the 800 plug. In this case you need an iLink to an FW800 cable, and yes there are such cables in the market (www.raidius.com).

iLink is a 4-pin (1394a) plug.
FW400 is a 6-pin (1394 alpha) plug.
While FW800 is a 9-pin (1394 betha) plug.

The 800 should read faster than the 400 since the former transfers twice (786.432 Mbit/s) the speedier than the latter.

As for the quality drop issue in transferring, it so much depends on what kinda program you are using in doing it. For instance, iMovie can only make movies in DVD quality although you shot your movies in Full HD format. However there are programs that keep the quality as original.

Happy hunting!