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USB - Firewire adaptors for Macbook

M

Mobgr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 24, 2008
23
0
Surrey GB
I have a new Macbook but a camcorder mwith Firewire is there an adaptor made which will provide me with a workable link?
 
There are no FireWire to USB adapters. At least none that I know of. They're totally different technologies and any such adapter would be impressively expensive.
 
Chundles said:
There are no FireWire to USB adapters. At least none that I know of. They're totally different technologies and any such adapter would be impressively expensive.
Click to expand...

$4.00
com-101a.jpg


facepalm.jpg
 
That is a DV capture device that does not give you access to the original footage. There are no FireWire/USB protocol converters.
 
I don't think there are any, sorry, ...cept for swapping yours for a whitebook or MBP ?

It's that face palm thing again....those wont work kastenbrust.... I should do a double facepalm but I wont.
 
If this thing existed, it would need spohisticated drivers to emulate the FW port to the system, including recreating the behaviour of Apple's original FW driver.

Not an easy task, and nobody will do it for a nice market. (Multiply DV camcorder owners by New MacBook owners.)
 
cube said:
And how would they even work for hard drives? Magic?
Click to expand...

To make this work, the adaptor just has to pretend to the USB driver that the FW drive is actually a USB drive. That's fairly easy compared to make the system think that the USB port is actually a FW port.

The point is: Connecting a hard drive by USB works, and is a well-established process. Importing DV in realtime over USB isn't -- so you'll have to go an extra step to make the usb port pretend to iMovie that it's a FW port -- on a system that doesn't even load a FW driver on startup because it has no FW ports.

Uh-oh. Any hobby programmers?
 
pianojoe said:
To make this work, the adaptor just has to pretend to the USB driver that the FW drive is actually a USB drive. That's fairly easy compared to make the system think that the USB port is actually a FW port.

The point is: Connecting a hard drive by USB works, and is a well-established process. Importing DV in realtime over USB isn't -- so you'll have to go an extra step to make the usb port pretend to iMovie that it's a FW port -- on a system that doesn't even load a FW driver on startup because it has no FW ports.

Uh-oh. Any hobby programmers?
Click to expand...

Apparently the cable that JoeG4 does just that. It has a converter built into the cable. But it costs $120.

So yeah, doable (apparently), but not without a lot of trouble... and I wonder about how consistent a device like that is. :/
 
Demosthenes X said:
Apparently the cable that JoeG4 does just that. It has a converter built into the cable. But it costs $120.

So yeah, doable (apparently), but not without a lot of trouble... and I wonder about how consistent a device like that is. :/
Click to expand...

Yeah, not to mention that they have only got it for Windows XP and specifically note that it will not even work with Vista, much less OSX or Linux. And they are out of the NTSC version and it has said that on that site for at least the last three months!:(

BTW- for anyone interested, here is another device with a similar function that has a note specifically about the incompatibility with Macs: DV Transfer Adapter.
 
pianojoe said:
To make this work, the adaptor just has to pretend to the USB driver that the FW drive is actually a USB drive. That's fairly easy compared to make the system think that the USB port is actually a FW port.

The point is: Connecting a hard drive by USB works, and is a well-established process. Importing DV in realtime over USB isn't -- so you'll have to go an extra step to make the usb port pretend to iMovie that it's a FW port -- on a system that doesn't even load a FW driver on startup because it has no FW ports.

Uh-oh. Any hobby programmers?
Click to expand...

OK, but that is not simply one of those $5 adapters shown. I have a FireWire/UltraSCSI converter that costs $100 and can only work with 1 device at a time.
 
Mobgr said:
I have a new Macbook but a camcorder mwith Firewire is there an adaptor made which will provide me with a workable link?
Click to expand...

I would look into capture devices, like Dazzle. What type of media does your camcorder take? If it takes a tape you could look for something that converts the DV tape to USB and import the video to your hard drive (similar to the Dazzle). If it is a newer camcorder with a media card you can buy a card reader. Or you could buy a new camcorder...

Since I don't know what type of camcorder you have, here is a link to Pinnacle's website for the Dazzle. Depending on how much video you have, and how often you plan on using it, it might be a good investment. http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSi...Video/Studio+Family/Video+Capture+for+Mac.htm
 
That's an analog video capture device, and it encodes in MPEG meant for viewing on iPods. That might be good enough for home movies, but its not a solution for anyone who actually wants quality video.
 
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