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I'm about ot buy a PCMCIA firewire card for my laptop.
Does anyone have experience of these things?
Iknow they have the potentional to transfer at 400mb/sec but if I have something plugged into one of the ports which is then transfering to something on the other port (for instance, I intend to imput a 'capture' signal from my ADVC-100 into one of the pors onto an external HDD connected on the other port.
I'm thinking there maybe some form of bottle-neck and my captures will suffer.
Any thoughts will be most welcome.
Will
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tgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
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Will, I can't claim to have done what you are intending but think of it this way.
As you say, firewire has a max RAW data speed of 400Mb/s.
DV from your ADVC is ~25Mb/s. Two streams of this (one from the ADVC to the pC, another from the PC to the HD) is well under the 400Mb/s that firewire is capable of. So it looks to me that as far as the firewire connection goes you should be OK. As to wether you have any other bottlenecks to worry about such as HD speed or processor speed, I can't say for sure. -
Thanks man
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have. -
I have 2 external hard drives both firewire and I have noticed no lag on cpu speeds or anything like that.
Why do you want it for your lappers ?, going to use that to capture. -
Originally Posted by hardcoreruss
Yeah, exactly that
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have. -
For anyone interested, the results can be found here
Will Haytgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have. -
Hmmm, tough luck.Originally Posted by Will Hay
I still doubt it is actually a firewire speed isuue. My guess would be that the bottleneck is the PC-Card bus. Doesn't help you though I am afraid. -
Member
- Apr 2002
- Adrift among the STUPID
possible reason also at the link above.Originally Posted by Will Hay
FYI, the chip in my PCMCIA card is the VIA OHCI compatible chipset... the cheap CompUSA card for the Americans.Hope is the trap the world sets for you every night when you go to sleep and the only reason you have to get up in the morning is the hope that this day, things will get better... But they never do, do they? -
Sorry, not entirely sure what you meanOriginally Posted by bugster
Do you share my guess that's it's because I have the firewire and ADVC-100 in the same PCMCIA card?
Thanks,
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have. -
Well, yes, but it is not the firewire as such that is the problem, but the interface between the PC (CPU) and the PCMCIA -Card that I think is the bottleneck.Originally Posted by Will HaySorry, not entirely sure what you meanOriginally Posted by bugster
Do you share my guess that's it's because I have the firewire and ADVC-100 in the same PCMCIA card?
Thanks,
Will
Anyway, as I said, it doesn't help.
If I am right I doubt using two PCMCIA cards would help either as they would be sharing the same bus (interface). -
Got you, thanks
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have. -
Member
- Apr 2002
- Adrift among the STUPID
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I can't see the interface between CPU and card to be the problem, unless the PCMCIA slot is not cardbus. I use a similar setup all the time! Toshiba Portege 3010 with pentium 266Mhz and 96MB ram, with cheap VIA based firewire card, external FW harddrive, and DV device. Works great! Only about 25% CPU use during captures with DVio. I do drop frames if I forget to shutdown the virus scanner though. The connection chain worked best like this:
Computer to external HD, HD to DV device. Firewire is looping, so no problem there. I did have some problems when I had the DV device plugged into one of the card's ports, and the HD into the other port.
I'll have to let NERO check the drive's speed later and see what is does, but it seems more than fast enough, faster than the internal HD by a lot. I also burn CD's through the same card without problems, though the internal HD only allows consistent 8x cd burning, if the internal HD was faster, I could burn at more like 32x+. Not sure where your problem lies, but I don't think it is with the FW card to CPU transfer speed. Maybe return the FW card, and get a different brand?Hope is the trap the world sets for you every night when you go to sleep and the only reason you have to get up in the morning is the hope that this day, things will get better... But they never do, do they? -
That sounds like what Will was doing. Maybe you have the answer! Will??Originally Posted by The village idiot
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I do do this (and I'm gonna confirm it by typing it now).Originally Posted by bugster
I have two ports on my PCMCIA firewire card, and in it are my firewire 30GB HDD and the ADVC-100.
I don't know the alternative
I think I mentioned, I can't go directly from the ADVC-100 to the firewire HDD without going through the PCMCIA card and back out again.
The only option I could see was to run the HDD via the USB2.0 connection, but as my ThinkPad is only USB 1.0 the frame loss was huge.
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have. -
Will, so your firewire HD does not have a 2nd or passthrough port?
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Yes, it does.Originally Posted by bugster
But from reading the manual of the ADVC-100 you can't run the unit directly to the HDD.
Or am I getting myself mixed up?
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have. -
Maybe. The way I understand it that 2nd port is a passthrough, not a connection to the HD as such.Originally Posted by Will Hay
I don't know, but from what The village idiot said, it has to be worth a try. -
I'll give it a go
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have. -
Okay, first the good news...
....so I tried running the ADVC-100 into the external firewire HDD, and the HDD into my firewire PCMCIA port, and it worked!!!!!!!
It all apeared fine and apart from the odd occasion when the HDD disapeared (but the ADVC didn't) all seemed fine.
The bad news is the frame loss wasn't even at a point where I could count it.
Using DVIO it froze at 16 seconds, every time (and I tested it about five times, with a reboot everytime).
I then tested DVIO by capturing to my primary HDD on my laptop, and again it was flawless, no dropped frames whatsoever.
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
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