Plug firewire camcorder in to back of firewire drive?

[seattle]

I am using a firewire hard drive with my Mac Mini and I want to connect a firewire camcorder also. Can I just plug the camcorder in to the drive and have it work? (external firewire drive has two firewire ports)

 

[robbieduncan]

Yes, that should work. Firewire supports daisy chaining.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Daisy-chaining a camera like that isn't recommended. If possible always plug the camera and drive directly into the computer. If you only have one FW400 port then an alternative is to capture the video to the computers internal HDD first then copy it over to the external drive.


Lethal

 

[fiercetiger224]

Daisy-chaining a camera like that isn't recommended. If possible always plug the camera and drive directly into the computer. If you only have one FW400 port then an alternative is to capture the video to the computers internal HDD first then copy it over to the external drive.


Lethal

I don't think that's necessarily true. For the past 8 years that I've been editing videos, I've NEVER had any problems with daisy-chaining and transferring to a firewire drive directly. No dropped frames, nada. For the past couple of years, I've worked with HDV, and still haven't had any dropped frames. You just need to specify non-drop frames within your capture settings in your editing program.

Apple designed firewire so that it can copy files directly from host to host; it doesn't transfer data to the computer first, then back to the drive, like USB does. So when you're transferring data to from tape to drive, it does just that.

 

[LethalWolfe]

I don't think that's necessarily true. For the past 8 years that I've been editing videos, I've NEVER had any problems with daisy-chaining and transferring to a firewire drive directly. No dropped frames, nada. For the past couple of years, I've worked with HDV, and still haven't had any dropped frames.

I didn't say it wouldn't work, I said it wasn't recommended. Not all FW devices strictly adhere to the FW spec some combinations of drives and and cameras won't play nice together. If that the case the alternatives are to give each device it's own FW port or capture to the internal HDD and then copy over to the external HDD.

You just need to specify non-drop frames within your capture settings in your editing program.

Drop frame vs non-drop frame refers to how timecode is applied to the video. It doesn't how the video is captured.


Lethal

 

[seattle]

Thanks for all the info. The internal drive in the mini has failed so the exteral firewire drive is my main drive. I am planning to use the firewire camcorder for time lapse movies so it will not be streaming realtime video.