What is a firewire?

[mikewg]

I've heard a lot of people talking about them, and I just bought a SB Audigy MP3 card and I know it has a firewire socket... but I don't know what it is! Can someone explain it to me please?

[jtor]

Firewire is a means of transferring video (digital8 or miniDV) from camcorder to PC. If you have a digital8 or miniDV camcorder, it should have a firewire port (IEEE1394 or ilink). Using a firewire cable, you connect your camcorder to the PC through this port. And by using a capture software (videostudio/mediastudiopro/premiere etc), you transfer your video to your PC's harddisk.

This is bidirectional by the way. Once you've transferred video to your PC, you can basically play with this video using the same capture software, and if desired, you can play the video back to your camcorder.

hope this helps.

[mikewg]

So basically... I just bought a SB Audigy MP3 sound card with a firewire input hole. Will this only input the sound from the camcorder, or the entire video?

[ktnwin]

Firewire is only the hardware data transfer mean. There must be some accompanying software driver that match with your SB Audigy MP3 sound card. Read the manual for the installation procedure.

Once you get the correct driver you will be able to capture digital video (and audio of course) from a digital camcorder.

This sound card conveniently contains a Firewire interface (built in).

[kinneera]

Just a sidenote, firewire actually refers to a type of high speed bus interface (the IEEE 1394 spec) that maxes out at around 400Mbps. This makes it a natural choice for digital camcorder connections, but it can be used for lots of other things too.