[Ti] Firewire and DV recording

[Bob Rashid]

Greetings Powerbook users,

I have lurked on this list years - ever since my first Ti (500) through 
the Ti 1G and now the 17" Al (affectionately known as the LTD - lunch 
tray deluxe). I purchased the 17" for the larger hard drive, max speed 
and the presence of a FireWire 800 port. It has met almost all of my 
expectations and is a wonderful portable/desktop solution with one 
exception.

Over the last month, I had started some video capturing for courses I 
teach (dentistry) and had the opportunity to use Final Cut Pro which I 
prefer over iMovie. I finally got hold of a Canon DV camera and tried 
to capture video to an external FW 400 drive. I had some major problems 
with capture and had to fall back to iMovie. However, I talked to the 
support for FCP and purchased a recommended FW800 drive for the capture 
disk (as my internal disk was full and the FW400 drive could not manage 
the capture without dropping major frames). From there, things went 
from bad to worse. Basically, attaching the FW800 drive on it's port 
and the camera to the FW400 port caused major failure in both iMovie 
and FCP. The cause was not apparent initially because I thought I was 
dealing with software conflicts and was not consistent with respect to 
the hardware attached to the powerbook. However, the end result was 
that I became aware of the issue of FW and iSight cameras reported in 
MacFixit which was very similar t my problem and started testing 'what 
worked' with my system. It is not very 'logical' but the following 
things work (and don't work) leading me to make the statement that "You 
shouldn't count on everything being plug and play with no problems"

FW800 drive into FW800 port AND DV camera into FW400 port = NO GO. 
Neither iMovie or Final Cut Pro will capture. The programs hang up 
until I turn off the camera.
DV camera into FW800 drive AND FW800 drive into FW800 port = NO GO, 
also.

However: FW800 drive into FW800 port AND DV camera into a FW400 drive 
which is then connected to the FW400 port = SUCCESS.

Other reports on MacFixit suggest putting the camera into a completely 
different (PCMCIA) FW bus or a FireWire hub for success. I don't 
understand all that is happening, but do know that there are many with 
the iSight cameras with problems and also some with DV camera capture 
problems. If you are having problems with video capture or are 
considering pursuing capture (especially using FCP which is much 
pickier about capture than iMovie), be sure to follow up on the 
different discussion lists for problems/solutions. The problems may not 
be just with the Firewire ports in the PB line.

I hope my experiences can save some others a bit of time.

Bob Rashid