Newbie stuff; external FW drives

[sb]

I apologize for posting a Final Cut Pro answer without stating that.

I haven't done any work using iMovie and an external HD, so it's quite
likely that you don't have any trouble using two ports at the same time, but
working in Final Cut, you must use a daisy chain. The application is not
able to send information up and down both ports simultaneously. The
communication between the software and the hardware is established when you
launch the application. If you change the FW video device (converter box,
camera, or deck) you should do it with the application closed, then connect
the new device, then relaunch the app. Some people just launch log and
capture or Edit to tape, but that's not a reliable way to establish the
communication with the video device.

 sb


On 7/25/03 10:04 AM, "Michael Winter" <winter at mac.com> wrote:

> 
> On Friday, July 25, 2003, at 11:10 AM, sb wrote:
> 
>> When connecting the camera, the computer, and the external FW drive,
>> make
>> sure you are daisy chaining them. Computer to harddrive to camera.
>> This is important on desktop machines, which have 2 FW ports.
>> You only want to use one FW port when working with video editing
>> applications.
> 
> Why is that? I've never had any problems using the two different ports
> on the desktop. I thought that was the preferred method since bandwidth
> is then split between two different busses. I know Firewire is a
> peer-to-peer protocol, but my impression (at least with iMovie) is the
> data is not going directly from the camera to the drive, but from the
> camera, to the computer, then to the drive. Am I wrong about that?
> 
> I know that even Firewire 400 is more than fast enough to handle two
> video streams, but doing it this way I've even been able to do large
> copy operations between my external FW drive and internal drive while
> I'm capturing video.
> 
> -Mike
>