Where can I get USB 3.0 to Firewire 400 converter?

[Videogamer555]

Is there an adapter I can get that will let me connect my old Sony Handycam's Firewire port to my new laptop's USB 3.0 port? I realize that it used to be impossible to manufacture a USB to Firewire converter, simply because of the speed difference (USB 2.0 is much slower than Firewire). However, with the invention of USB 3.0, it is now possible to have USB devices that communicate just as fast as Firewire devices (at least if you are talking about the older Firewire 400 standard, as I think the newer Firewire 800 standard is faster than USB 3.0). Therefore, it is now possible to manufacture a USB 3.0 to Firewire 400 converter. Despite the fact that it is technologically possible now, I see no such products for sale. Why?

Of course, maybe I'm just looking in all the wrong places. Maybe I'm looking only at stores dedicated to selling consumer level devices, but I should be looking at online stores that sell professional level devices instead, if I am to find a USB 3.0 to Firewire 400 converter. If anybody knows of any place at all that sells such a device, regardless of how much it costs, please post a link to the website in a reply to this post. Thanks in advance.

[pippas]

Something like THIS is about as near as you'll get (if you can still find one for sale anywhere...)

The problem with transferring DV video without any quality loss is that it is a 'real-time' process, and - unlike Firewire - USB doesn't provide the option for the continuous data stream required.

So, even though USB 3 maybe quick enough, it's still not a continuous data stream, so it's no good for DV transfer....

[El Heggunte]

There are Firewire-2-PCI-e adapters, so...

wouldn't it be better to buy — or build — a semi-cheapo PC for video capturing

[redwudz]

I couldn't find one either. The problem may be that Firewire requires a higher voltage than a USB port supplies.
So it would likely require a external power supply. USB 2.1 may also be fast enough.
These are just guesses on my part. But keep looking.

[Videogamer555]

Something like THIS is about as near as you'll get (if you can still find one for sale anywhere...)

The problem with transferring DV video without any quality loss is that it is a 'real-time' process, and - unlike Firewire - USB doesn't provide the option for the continuous data stream required.

So, even though USB 3 maybe quick enough, it's still not a continuous data stream, so it's no good for DV transfer....

Then how do USB webcams work? They obviously provide a continuous stream.
And by the way, thank you for pointing me to that Pinnacle capture device. That looks EXACTLY like what I will need. Now I just need to find a place that still sells used ones.

[Videogamer555]

I couldn't find one either. The problem may be that Firewire requires a higher voltage than a USB port supplies.
So it would likely require a external power supply. USB 2.1 may also be fast enough.
These are just guesses on my part. But keep looking.

There are a lot of USB devices that use an external power supply. Even USB hubs have external power supplies. The technology to do it exists. It's just that no company cares to manufacture such a device.

[El Heggunte]

Just quoting Wikipedia — so if they are wrong, don't blame me 😇

USB is unsuitable for transfer of the video data from tape because tape by its very nature does not support variable data rates. USB relies heavily on processor support and this was not guaranteed to service the USB port in time. The recent move away from tape towards solid state memory or disc media (e.g. SD Cards, optical disks or hard drives) has facilitated moving to USB transfer because file based data can be moved in segments as required.

[orsetto]

You're not seeing such a converter for several marketing reasons, aside from any technical hurdles. Demand for such a converter is strong, but it comes from a tiny niche group of users so small that developing such a thing isn't cost effective (if it was, commodity Windows laptops would still have IEE1394 ports or include Thunderbolt). Most of the people who still need FireWire 400 connectivity need it for legacy devices that are either too expensive to give up (medium format digital photography backs) or irreplaceable (Nikon/Imacon film scanners, Creo flatbeds, etc). Those people have long since resigned themselves to either using a separate, older Windows/Mac computer to run those items, or migrating to a current Mac with "Thunderbolt" port that is (clumsily) convertible to FireWire with a dongle accessory.

Makers of that converter would be dealing with a lot of other variables. The problem isn't just the hardware: many legacy FireWire devices run on proprietary software that expects a certain type of FireWire controller chip, driver or OS interface. That software in many cases hasn't been updated in ten years, so wouldn't necessarily be compatible with Windows 8, 10 or current versions of MacOS patched thru an oddball adapter. That would create a support nightmare for developers of any FireWire>USB converter, akin to what happened with the old USB>SCSI converters (which were a disaster).

[vhelp]

yeah, the pinnacle studio moviebox is what you want. I have the ultimate version. there are two versions: the black--ultimate and the white--original

all you need is the white one, much cheaper, and for $60 you can have one via ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pinnacle-Studio-MovieBox-USB-/282170725500?hash=item41b2af947c...UAAOSwMgdX1Kgo

The Pinnacle Studio MovieBox includes everything you need to take your old home movies and create new digital video. The package is in excellent condition and was only used one time. It includes all the hardware and software - the Pinnacle box, two DVDs, power cord, user guide, etc.

its up for bid (no Buy it now) but i can tell you right now that no one is bidding for it nor will they at the last minute or seconds, so you are safe to bid a few dollars higher in the last 5 seconds because no one is looking for this item. just put a bid for $62 in the last 5 or so seconds and it will be yours. otherwise, you'll pay list price anywhere else. these are not vcrs. quality'wise and reliability'wise, you are safe to pick this item up.

[Videogamer555]

yeah, the pinnacle studio moviebox is what you want. I have the ultimate version. there are two versions: the black--ultimate and the white--original

all you need is the white one, much cheaper, and for $60 you can have one via ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pinnacle-Studio-MovieBox-USB-/282170725500?hash=item41b2af947c...UAAOSwMgdX1Kgo

The Pinnacle Studio MovieBox includes everything you need to take your old home movies and create new digital video. The package is in excellent condition and was only used one time. It includes all the hardware and software - the Pinnacle box, two DVDs, power cord, user guide, etc.

its up for bid (no Buy it now) but i can tell you right now that no one is bidding for it nor will they at the last minute or seconds, so you are safe to bid a few dollars higher in the last 5 seconds because no one is looking for this item. just put a bid for $62 in the last 5 or so seconds and it will be yours. otherwise, you'll pay list price anywhere else. these are not vcrs. quality'wise and reliability'wise, you are safe to pick this item up.

I'm surprised that only one company has ever manufactured something like this (unless there's a patent on it). I'd think something like this would be in big demand. There's tons of posts on various forums on the internet asking about connecting a Firewire camera to a USB port. I'd think companies could make a fortune by manufacturing such a device.

[pippas]

I'm surprised that only one company has ever manufactured something like this (unless there's a patent on it). I'd think something like this would be in big demand. There's tons of posts on various forums on the internet asking about connecting a Firewire camera to a USB port. I'd think companies could make a fortune by manufacturing such a device.

I think the first paragraph in Orsetto's post#8 above pretty well sums up why there is no such device......

[El Heggunte]

In other words..... Firewire became (effectively) «obsolete»...
just like ISA, IDE, AGP, PCI, USB 1.1, ......

[usually_quiet]

I found a thread in another forum with a post explaining the difference between Firewire data transfer and USB data transfer:

Firewire is a DMA transfer and needs a processor at each end to set up and monitor the data transfer. USB is little different from the serial port communications of my youth. They work on an ACK/NAK protocol where (in a nutshell - the actual protocol is a bit more sophisticated) the sender sends a packet of data and if the receiver likes it, it returns an ACK (acknowledge), and if not it sends an NAK (notacknowledge) and the sender tries again.

Second the speed of the USB port is too slow.The DV data is a fire-hose of data that runs about 25Mbps. And it doesn't stop when the buffer is full as in USB. Meaning that you would certainly see dropped frames.

This difference in protocols is the reason why something like the Pinnacle MovieBox is necessary to translate from Firewire to USB.

[Videogamer555]

I'm surprised that only one company has ever manufactured something like this (unless there's a patent on it). I'd think something like this would be in big demand. There's tons of posts on various forums on the internet asking about connecting a Firewire camera to a USB port. I'd think companies could make a fortune by manufacturing such a device.

I think the first paragraph in Orsetto's post#8 above pretty well sums up why there is no such device......

There is one, the one from Pinnacle. Why didn't other companies also manufacture one? Does Pinnacle have a patent on it? USB 3.0 is fast enough.

The voltage problem (USB voltage level not being the same as Firewire) can be accomplished by using an external power supply with the correct voltage for the Firewire side of the adapter interface. A microcontroller could be used to convert the USB command signals to equivalent Firewire command signals, and visa versa. Just make sure that the microcontroller is compatible with both voltage levels (so that one of them doesn't damage the microcontroller). If data from the Firewire stream needs to be broken up into packets for USB compatibility, the Firewire video data stream can be buffered in the device's memory. The USB to Firewire converter will need to have RAM chips that are controlled by its microcontroller, in order to buffer the Firewire video data stream into chunks that can be sent in USB packets. As for speed, USB 3.0 is certainly fast enough to keep up with Firewire 400. There is no technological problem with building such a device.

Even if not manufactured by a major American company, I would expect one of those Chinese companies (who's name is never on the products they produce, leaving just a blank device case with maybe only a description of the device "USB to Firewire Converter" printed on it) to manufacture cheap generic ones, and sell them on eBay for maybe about $10 each. Those Chinese companies selling on eBay seem to manage to sell any device for only 1/10th of the price (some times even less) of an equivalent product made by an American company that get sold in well known stores (like Best Buy).

In fact, I know of some products that have never been made by American compenies (who for marketing reasons figured that they couldn't sell a lot), which HAVE been made by Chinese companies. For example, I've seen this http://www.ebay.com/itm/MCM-33-2060-RF-Demodulator-CH-3-IN-Composite-A-V-OUT-/371479700592 channel 3 NTSC demodulator which is designed to demodulate the channel 3 RF video signal from very old computers (like Sinclare Spectrum, which has absolutely no composite video output at all) into a baseband video signal that comes out of an RCA connector that can be connected to any video display that has a composite video input (and yes, I know that the product is listed as from a USA seller, but that just means that the wherehouse where they are stored is in the US, but I'm pretty sure it was made by a generic product manufacture in China, as I've never seen any such device sold by major retailers, just eBay, and most Chinese generic manufacturers sell exclusively through eBay). This product would only be interesting to a narrow market (those interested in collecting retro computers) as it would let them connect it to any video display that doesn't have an RF input, but only a composite input. So obviously no American company has manufactured one because the market is way too narrow. But this hasn't stopped a Chinese generic device manufacturing company from making such a device and selling it on eBay. So my question is this. Why aren't we seeing Firewire 400 to USB 3.0 adapters being sold by Chinese eBay sellers?

[pippas]

There is one, the one from Pinnacle. Why didn't other companies also manufacture one? Does Pinnacle have a patent on it? USB 3.0 is fast enough.

..and as you know, even that Pinnacle device is not made any more... bit of a clue as to why no one else has bothered, I would suggest?.....

As Orsetto suggests, it's such a tiny specialised market in the grand scheme of things, it's not really worth anyone's while designing, building and marketing such a unit.

For Firewire transfer, locating an old PC, adding a (cheap) Firewire card if necessary, and 'capture' (transfer) your DV footage onto that machine is probably the simplest and cheapest way of doing things -as El Heggunte has already described in post #3

It's then easy enough to transfer those captured files to a laptop - or whatever - using USB......

[vhelp]

I'm surprised that only one company has ever manufactured something like this (unless there's a patent on it). I'd think something like this would be in big demand. There's tons of posts on various forums on the internet asking about connecting a Firewire camera to a USB port. I'd think companies could make a fortune by manufacturing such a device.

LOL. I went through this phase, myself, a few years ago. My dell laptop from 2010 does not have firewire. I searched and searched but couldn't find anything until i found the pinnacle moviebox. Its the only thing available, actually. Well, there's one more device, but the name slips my memory. Just go with the pinnacle before its too late.

EDIT: If you don't have an ebay account. You can still purchase it as a Guest. I just learned about this. But I do lots of purchases, so I use a myvanilla debit card from CVS. $4 to activate at cvs, .50 cents for each purchase and no monthly fees. Then i linked my paypal account to that debt card. Then when i make purchases, I select Paypal and the rest is smooth sailing. Any time i want to purchase something, i run down to cvs and put the money into the myvanilla card plus $3.95 fee for that--no big deal, and I go back on ebay and make the purchase. Its as good (and safe) as amazon though on amazon i use the gift cards only. Ebay wants your SSN if you try to use the Ebay and PayPal gift cards. They have cards for both. But both require your SSN, and every time you make a purchase through gift cards. That's what I found out, il-regardless of the rules about giving out your SSN, you can't go past ebay without it. So forget gift cards on ebay. Anyway. I was just sharing my experience, just in case you were hesitant about purchasing on ebay. good luck.

[orsetto]

So my question is this. Why aren't we seeing Firewire 400 to USB 3.0 adapters being sold by Chinese eBay sellers?

Because it may not be as cut and dried as you think. The Pinnacle MovieBox was unique and one of a kind: so unique that virtually every damned time this FireWire>USB converter question comes up here, ALL of us old hands forget the damned thing ever existed until vhelp chimes in at some point to remind us. When it was first offered a l-o-n-g time ago, the MovieBox was not a disposable eBay item: it sold for over $70. Its might not be something that can be sold at a profit for $10 on eBay: even now, the circuitry for buffering the DV frames into USB might be more complicated to pull off than a typical dumb adapter. This type of adapter is also notorious for being critically dependent on the computer hardware and software common when it was made: two years later, the thing could become useless because the commodity USB controller used by 90% of computer mfrs might change in some infinitesimal spec, or Microsoft will randomly decide to eff up Windows every which way from Sunday for no good reason, or Apple will pull one of its periodic, utterly pointless wholesale rewrites of the OSX kernel.

The Pinnacle MovieBox was engineered for use with Windows XP and earlier, it was popular but even when new the DV>USB function failed for a huge chunk of buyers (look up archived reviews). Most people bought it to convert analog inputs to digital via USB: the DV>USB digital adapter feature was almost an afterthought. Now, ten years later, its been rediscovered as a bit of a cult item among those desperate to connect a half-dead Handycam to a new USB-only Surface Pro or Lenovo laptop they just bought. Reports indicate the newer your laptop or OS, the less likely the MovieBox DV>USB feature will work, but its certainly possible: enough people still claim success to make it worth a try (if you can get it at a good price and resell if it doesn't work for you). Later square-shaped versions of the MovieBox are apparently far more buggy and much less likely to work with newer systems: stick with the rounded model vhelp linked to.

Other issues come into play as I posted earlier. There is a difference between marketing a consumer-grade analog>digital VHS conversion box (which just happens to offer USB conversion for DV video cameras) and a general-purpose "FireWire To USB Adapter". The video box is easy to support because the mfr isn't really making any big promises beyond maybe being compatible with a Handycam: the majority of buyers don't care about the USB>DV feature, so if it fails for some people the negative complaints on Amazon from that subgroup have little impact on overall sales. A dedicated FireWire>USB adapter is another story: it would be expected to work perfectly for DV>USB video, and it would need to be compatible with a wide range of other FireWire devices with a mind-boggling array of dated software requirements. It begs the question of whether the target buyer would ever open their wallet: if you owned a fancy audio mixer, editing station, Phase One digital back or $10,000 film scanner, would you bother wasting your time with a klugy adapter, or would you just fall back on an older completely-compatible computer to run the thing?

The sad fact is FireWire is dead. It never really expanded beyond the Apple Mac market, aside from a brief flurry of Sony Vaio Windows laptops. So when fickle Apple decided to inexplicably throw FireWire under the bus and move to ThunderBolt (on the verge of USB3, yet- doh!) FireWire was doomed. People today have a very different relationship to tech than they did in the recent past: now, everything is disposable. Consumer Handycams went out with the Bondi Blue iMacs, there just isn't enough demand for even the Chinese to bother with a dodgy adapter that probably wouldn't work half the time. Sentiment is also waning in regards to old home videos: most who haven't yet transferred their Handycam vids are content attaching a $15 analog>usb capture stick and bypassing the DV output. They aren't up in arms at being unable to capture via FireWire, they don't see a quality difference. Or if they do, they don't care in the age of iPhone/Galaxy selfie videos and bastardized youTube encodes.

[El Heggunte]

Just for the notes... the jurassic Audigy 2 ZS sound card included a Firewire port
(yes, I owned one of them)

[Videogamer555]

So my question is this. Why aren't we seeing Firewire 400 to USB 3.0 adapters being sold by Chinese eBay sellers?

Because it may not be as cut and dried as you think. The Pinnacle MovieBox was unique and one of a kind: so unique that virtually every damned time this FireWire>USB converter question comes up here, ALL of us old hands forget the damned thing ever existed until vhelp chimes in at some point to remind us. When it was first offered a l-o-n-g time ago, the MovieBox was not a disposable eBay item: it sold for over $70. Its might not be something that can be sold at a profit for $10 on eBay: even now, the circuitry for buffering the DV frames into USB might be more complicated to pull off than a typical dumb adapter. This type of adapter is also notorious for being critically dependent on the computer hardware and software common when it was made: two years later, the thing could become useless because the commodity USB controller used by 90% of computer mfrs might change in some infinitesimal spec, or Microsoft will randomly decide to eff up Windows every which way from Sunday for no good reason, or Apple will pull one of its periodic, utterly pointless wholesale rewrites of the OSX kernel.

The Pinnacle MovieBox was engineered for use with Windows XP and earlier, it was popular but even when new the DV>USB function failed for a huge chunk of buyers (look up archived reviews). Most people bought it to convert analog inputs to digital via USB: the DV>USB digital adapter feature was almost an afterthought. Now, ten years later, its been rediscovered as a bit of a cult item among those desperate to connect a half-dead Handycam to a new USB-only Surface Pro or Lenovo laptop they just bought. Reports indicate the newer your laptop or OS, the less likely the MovieBox DV>USB feature will work, but its certainly possible: enough people still claim success to make it worth a try (if you can get it at a good price and resell if it doesn't work for you). Later square-shaped versions of the MovieBox are apparently far more buggy and much less likely to work with newer systems: stick with the rounded model vhelp linked to.

Other issues come into play as I posted earlier. There is a difference between marketing a consumer-grade analog>digital VHS conversion box (which just happens to offer USB conversion for DV video cameras) and a general-purpose "FireWire To USB Adapter". The video box is easy to support because the mfr isn't really making any big promises beyond maybe being compatible with a Handycam: the majority of buyers don't care about the USB>DV feature, so if it fails for some people the negative complaints on Amazon from that subgroup have little impact on overall sales. A dedicated FireWire>USB adapter is another story: it would be expected to work perfectly for DV>USB video, and it would need to be compatible with a wide range of other FireWire devices with a mind-boggling array of dated software requirements. It begs the question of whether the target buyer would ever open their wallet: if you owned a fancy audio mixer, editing station, Phase One digital back or $10,000 film scanner, would you bother wasting your time with a klugy adapter, or would you just fall back on an older completely-compatible computer to run the thing?

The sad fact is FireWire is dead. It never really expanded beyond the Apple Mac market, aside from a brief flurry of Sony Vaio Windows laptops. So when fickle Apple decided to inexplicably throw FireWire under the bus and move to ThunderBolt (on the verge of USB3, yet- doh!) FireWire was doomed. People today have a very different relationship to tech than they did in the recent past: now, everything is disposable. Consumer Handycams went out with the Bondi Blue iMacs, there just isn't enough demand for even the Chinese to bother with a dodgy adapter that probably wouldn't work half the time. Sentiment is also waning in regards to old home videos: most who haven't yet transferred their Handycam vids are content attaching a $15 analog>usb capture stick and bypassing the DV output. They aren't up in arms at being unable to capture via FireWire, they don't see a quality difference. Or if they do, they don't care in the age of iPhone/Galaxy selfie videos and bastardized youTube encodes.

I bet it could be done really cheap by an electronics hobbyist. USB3 interface chip, Firewire interface chip, PIC microcontroller, and some RAM chips. RAM chips are for frame buffering the video stream from the Firewire port. PIC microcontroller controls the whole thing. One would only need to do research on the USB and Firewire protocols (both of which I believe are freely available on the internet, not proprietary trade secrets) to figure out how to program the PIC microcontroller.

[Videogamer555]

As Orsetto suggests, it's such a tiny specialised market in the grand scheme of things, it's not really worth anyone's while designing, building and marketing such a unit.

Here's another device that also fits a specialized market, but eBay has one. Probably came from China somewhere, as the device doesn't have any company logo on it, and I can't find any major company that manufactures any such device.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MCM-33-2060-RF-Demodulator-CH-3-IN-Composite-A-V-OUT-/371479700592

I would have expected the Chinese to make a USB 3.0 to Firewire 400 converter by now.

[orsetto]

The Chinese aren't gonna build anything they can't sell and make a profit on. That reverse RF modulator has to be the simplest cheapest device they could possibly mfr: some of the standard modulators they sell already work in reverse as an undocumented option. Not much in the way of engineering, cost or user failure points there.

I get that you REALLY want a FireEire 400>USB converter: I want one, too. I have a few priceless legacy items I would love to be able to use with newer, faster laptops or mini desktops. Its a pain maintaining a computer museum to run my stuff. But I gave up the adapter fantasy: its too complicated for them to construct economically yet ensure broad enough compatibility to justify a likely $100+ price point. It was tried years ago by a couple niche Mac vendors and bombed disastrously: didn't work and cost a bloody fortune. The Pinnacle Moviebox was a simplified variation on the idea, limited strictly to video camera input, and even that didn't work half the time. Too many potential pitfalls.

Of course, anything is possible. I would not be terribly surprised to see you come back to this thread a year from now, triumphantly posting a link to such a converter. But I very much doubt that will happen: it would take a brand name vendor with strong association to at least one major pro FireWire device, subcontracting with a Chinese supplier to guarantee compatibility. A generic no-name supplier is unlikely to produce it on its own: there is no market for it without pro-brand tie in. The only brand I can think of with the slightest hope of pulling it off properly would be Phase One, since they still need to support a boatload of once-$40K FireWire-only cameras that are still in active service. The catch there is Phase One's stratospheric pricing structure: they would charge $500 minimum (they're asking $300 for a 12" electric cable release you could make in your basement from $2 in Mouser parts).

This is beginning to remind me of other threads where people insist you can buy a Chinese high-definition TV recorder that can record via HDMI from a North American cable decoder box. No matter how many times this is debunked, the legend persists. Yeah, something like that exists- but its useless outside of Hong Kong and the models change faster than the weather because they're all glitchy. The tuner is specific to Hong Kong, the HDMI input is dodgy at best, and every person foolish enough to import one (at great expense) eventually complains the recordings are trapped inside the unit. Meaning it offers zero benefit over the cable company PVR, and less utility than a second-hand TiVO at half the price. IOW, the generic Chinese factories churn out a lot of interesting boutique electronics, but not all of it delivers what it promises. A quick thread search for "EZ Cap USB Video Ripoff" will net plenty of stories.

[lingyi]

[QUOTE=Videogamer555;2460133][QUOTE=pippas;2460127]

In fact, I know of some products that have never been made by American compenies (who for marketing reasons figured that they couldn't sell a lot), which HAVE been made by Chinese companies. For example, I've seen this http://www.ebay.com/itm/MCM-33-2060-RF-Demodulator-CH-3-IN-Composite-A-V-OUT-/371479700592 channel 3 NTSC demodulator which is designed to demodulate the channel 3 RF video signal from very old computers (like Sinclare Spectrum, which has absolutely no composite video output at all) into a baseband video signal that comes out of an RCA connector that can be connected to any video display that has a composite video input (and yes, I know that the product is listed as from a USA seller, but that just means that the wherehouse where they are stored is in the US, but I'm pretty sure it was made by a generic product manufacture in China, as I've never seen any such device sold by major retailers, just eBay, and most Chinese generic manufacturers sell exclusively through eBay). This product would only be interesting to a narrow market (those interested in collecting retro computers) as it would let them connect it to any video display that doesn't have an RF input, but only a composite input. So obviously no American company has manufactured one because the market is way too narrow. But this hasn't stopped a Chinese generic device manufacturing company from making such a device and selling it on eBay. So my question is this. Why aren't we seeing Firewire 400 to USB 3.0 adapters being sold by Chinese eBay sellers?

A little research on the product you linked to shows that it's a very poor example for your case:

- The seller is a U.S. based liqudator and the product is also available on their website (likely bought for pennies on the dollar)
- The product is from 2012 and no longer available from the U.S. based original manufacturer/distributor-
- The selling price was $50 in 2012. The higher eBay cost is probably because it puts it on the low end of available of RF demodulators
- The product is made to be used with a specfic HAM TV device (in the description) and could have the product and manufacturer's info on the bottom (very common)
- A total of 26 have been sold
- There are a number of other RF demoluators available on eBay

[sqgl]

yeah, the pinnacle studio moviebox is what you want. I have the ultimate version. there are two versions: the black--ultimate and the white--original

all you need is the white one, much cheaper, and for $60 you can have one via ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pinnacle-Studio-MovieBox-USB-/282170725500?hash=item41b2af947c...UAAOSwMgdX1Kgo

Be warned: there are several Pinnacle "MovieBox" models and some do not have Firewire. Others are not Windows 7 compatible (check the official drivers list).

Also it is USB 2 not 3 FWIW.

[jgg]

I know this thread is pretty old, and I have no idea whether the OP is still around, but just in case she or he is, I have a question.

Doesn't your laptop have any other slots or connections besides the USB? I mean, isn't there an express slot of one flavor or another?

The reason I ask is that there are lots of express-to-firewire cards available.

[sqgl]

My HP Pavilion DV6 does not have an express card slot. I forgot to check when I bought it six years ago because, like you, I presumed it was standard.

[jgg]

My HP Pavilion DV6 does not have an express card slot. I forgot to check when I bought it six years ago because, like you, I presumed it was standard.

Actually, I didn't "presume" anything; mine was just sort of a technical question.

I'm sure there are lots of laptops out there that don't have express slots.

I guess the OP is no longer watching this thread.

[pandy]

The problem with transferring DV video without any quality loss is that it is a 'real-time' process, and - unlike Firewire - USB doesn't provide the option for the continuous data stream required. So, even though USB 3 maybe quick enough, it's still not a continuous data stream, so it's no good for DV transfer....

Uncompressed SD 10 bit (8.2) format require 270Mbps = USB2 should be able to deal with, also Firewire, and video is not continuous data stream due frame structure so there is nothing wrong with USB2 and for sure USB3 is capable to stream over 10 raw SD video streams.

The reason I ask is that there are lots of express-to-firewire cards available.

Perhaps some docking station? (Thunderbolt/USB3)

[sqgl]

I recommend buying a second-hand HP EliteBook which is the most recent and powerful laptop with Firewire. Twice the price of a Pinnacle Music Box but you get a whole laptop. That will be my solution anyhow.