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whats the point of firewire?
- Thread starter joshuaaaron
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its better and faster than USB, but it never took off.
there are other things that use firewire. some printers, externals, lcd's, even some mp3 player's i've seen.
there are other things that use firewire. some printers, externals, lcd's, even some mp3 player's i've seen.
- Standard connector for video cameras. USB cameras are still in minority and nowhere near as compatible as the millions of DV + Firewire cameras out there for editing film.
- Much faster for data transfer, audio and film guys swear by it over USB 2.0 because it's so consistent and, because it has it's own controller, the speed isn't governed by computer activity.
- Provides more power than USB 2.0 - external portable HDDs are much happier on Firewire than USB 2.0
There is a pile of FW accessories out there, I'd seek them out over USB stuff any day of the week.
FW is several times faster than USB so you can use it to move over large files way faster than USB. Devices such as DV/HD video cameras use FireWire, as well as external hard drives.
Also, Final Cut Pro prefers the user to have all their media files on a separate drive in order to maximize performance and keep the boot drive clean - FireWire is a popular option to use in this case. It's not the smartest idea in the world to use a USB external drive for FCP work
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Also, Final Cut Pro prefers the user to have all their media files on a separate drive in order to maximize performance and keep the boot drive clean - FireWire is a popular option to use in this case. It's not the smartest idea in the world to use a USB external drive for FCP work
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Try every digital camcorder and every external hard drive worth using.
People said the same thing about USB in 1997.
I run XP via parallels from my FW drive - and it runs superbly - without bogging down my internal drive. Now I can run parallels seamlessly whether in Leopard or Tiger. Prior to this - many errors after booting into a different OS - and a fairly large performance hit on OSX when running virtual system.
It is very fast - but far more importantly - consistent and predictable.
It does NOT use up one of your precious few USB ports - which is nice.
Is daisy-chain-able, also a nice feature.
And ditto FW cameras kicking the @(#* out of USB cameras.
It is very fast - but far more importantly - consistent and predictable.
It does NOT use up one of your precious few USB ports - which is nice.
Is daisy-chain-able, also a nice feature.
And ditto FW cameras kicking the @(#* out of USB cameras.
Words of inexperience.
As noted above, if you do ANY media work you will be using firewire. Actually I'm all about FW800 now - my FW800 port downloads photos from my 8GB CF cards about twice as fast as the USB version it replaced. And of course external hard drives. I'm not a fan of the FW800 plug design though, I wish they had made it skinnier and wider just like USB or even the FW400 plug.
In short, IMO, only newbs are NOT using firewire....
Yup, any decent audio interface will be Firewire based, my camcorder uses Firewire and even my primary external HD is Firewire based.
Even for external HDs it makes a big difference. My 13,000+ song iTunes library takes about a minute to load up if I connect my Maxtor drive via USB. Connect it via Firewire and the whole lot loads up in about 10 seconds.
Even for external HDs it makes a big difference. My 13,000+ song iTunes library takes about a minute to load up if I connect my Maxtor drive via USB. Connect it via Firewire and the whole lot loads up in about 10 seconds.
What's the point of USB?
Seriously, we could drop it. Firewire works/ed for iPods, external harddrives, etc. And BT works for mice, keyboards etc. Also syncing for things like iPods, Zune etc would work with Wi-Fi now a days.
The best thing about USB 1.1,2.0 and one day 3.0 is that they all work with each other. If FW 400 and FW had that going, we'd be set.
Seriously, we could drop it. Firewire works/ed for iPods, external harddrives, etc. And BT works for mice, keyboards etc. Also syncing for things like iPods, Zune etc would work with Wi-Fi now a days.
The best thing about USB 1.1,2.0 and one day 3.0 is that they all work with each other. If FW 400 and FW had that going, we'd be set.
You can put Macs into Target disk mode and use them as external HDs with firewire, not sure if that works over USB?
Came in very handy when I wanted to bring in about 20GB of DV into college and I didn't have an external HD, just popped them onto my MBP
Came in very handy when I wanted to bring in about 20GB of DV into college and I didn't have an external HD, just popped them onto my MBP