Firewire 800, IEEE-1394b

[copiche]

Hi, guys, I was looking at these new Firewire 800 IEEE-1394b capture cards and I was wondering if upgrading from the regular Firewire 400 IEEE-1394 would increase the capture time when done from a DV Camera? or will it still be done in real time 1 X even with the new 1394b card?
Thanks.

[redwudz]

AFAIK; Unless and until the DV cameras themselves use 1394b, I wouldn't expect any increase in transfer speed. Firewire cards aren't capture devices, just data transfer devices. The speed of 1394b would only be available if both devices use the same 1394b protocol. They should, however be able to downshift to the regular 1394 protocol.

I believe you are also correct in that the transfer of DV data from the tape will be no faster than realtime, no matter what the 1394 device speed.

[HatchetMan]

1394a = 6 pin
1394b = 9 pin
I wanna get this

[yg1968]

1394b uses 9 pin? That's confusing. Does that mean that you have to buy a 9 pin to 4 pin cable to use the 1394b with a digital camcorder?

I wish that Firewire would stick to one kind of cable, it gets confusing. There so many different 1394a Firewire cables available:

4 pin to 6 pin
6 pin to 6 pin
4 pin to 4 pin

With 1394b, does this mean that we will have the following new cables?

A new 9 pin to 9 pin?
A new 9 pin to 4 pin?
A new 9 pin to 6 pin?

[HatchetMan]

If you have a 1394a camera w/ 4 pin, then just use the 4 pin 1394a input, and vice versa.

[yg1968]

I looked at the tigerdirect.com (or tigerdirect.ca for Canadians) website and they have 9 pin to 4 pin firewire cables. They also have 9 pin to 9 pin and 9 pin to 6 pin firewire cables.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=784541&CatId=71

[thecoalman]

Depends on what ports are available on your computer and the device your connecting. For regular 1394 and a digital cam only 4 pin is required but since most computers have 6 pin inputs you need a 4 pin to 6 pin. If you had a 4 pin input you could use a 4 pin to 4 pin. The additional 2 pins on a 6 pin are for powering an external device, since a video cam supplies it's own power it only has a 4 pin input. On the other hand my ADVC has 6 to 6 because it can be powered by the firewire cable.

The additional pins for 1394b I would imagine are additional data transfer pins to carry the additional bandwidth.

[yg1968]

I see. The extra pins are therefore necessary for certain devices.

Actually, the only device that I have that uses Firewire is a digital camcorder. So I would then use a 9 pin to 4 pin cable for my digital camcorder if I were to concect to a 1394b port.

Thanks for the info. Useful to know if I ever decide to upgrade my firewire port.