[MacDV] Re: Newbie stuff; external FW drives

[Frank Wiewandt]

> 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.

Hmmm, that's interesting. Might make some sense where 1 bus is just split into 2
ports. I used to do as you suggest through the single port on my laptop, but
ultimately added a firewire card to my PowerBook in order to have 2 separate FW
busses (as opposed to 1 bus  split into 2 ports as is a common practice), 1 for
my camera & 1 for my external HD. This has totally eliminated dropped frames for
me. I'm using FCP3 & have had no problems with my current 2 bus configuration
whatsoever. I'll soon be moving to FCP4.

I notice you mentioned some advice from the COW. I read the forums often but
don't posted there, at least so far. I'll have to check out the topic that
you're referring to. I do think that they, the COW's forum moderators, are
great.

Frank Wiewandt