Member Avatar for Psyrick

Hi! My friend recently bought a notebook he intends to use for some of his home video editing. Unfortunately after he opens the box there is no firewire port on the notebook instead he has 4 usb ports. I tried suggesting that he buys a pcmcia card for the firewire unfortunately again there is no pcmcia socket in his notebook. How can we get around this? Is there any other way he can connect his videocam to the laptop using firewire?:lol:

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Short, practical options that work around a laptop with no native FireWire port (building on and ):

  1. ExpressCard-to-FireWire adapter — if the notebook has an ExpressCard slot this is the cleanest solution. ExpressCard adapters present a proper IEEE 1394 host on the bus so DV capture software sees the camcorder as expected. Check whether you need a 4‑pin or 6‑pin cable and install the adapter vendor drivers. See ExpressCard and IEEE 1394 background for how these interfaces differ: ExpressCard and IEEE_1394.

  2. Capture on another machine with a FireWire port — use any desktop or older laptop with a 1394 PCI/PCIe card to capture the tape to disk, then copy the resulting files to the notebook (network share, external drive). This is often cheapest: capture once on a machine that supports DV-over-1394, then edit on the notebook.

  3. Analog pass-through capture — many camcorders also output composite/S‑Video. A USB analog-capture dongle will let you digitize playback in real time. Quality is lower than native DV, but it works when no digital link is available; research USB capture devices and capture software first: Video capture.

Important cautions and tips:

  • Avoid “USB-to-FireWire” cable claims — USB and IEEE 1394 use different protocols and a passive cable won’t convert them. The reliable solutions are an adapter/card that implements 1394 on the host side or capturing on a machine that already has FireWire.
  • Before buying anything, identify the camcorder connector type (4‑pin vs 6‑pin), confirm the laptop slot type, and check OS/driver support for the adapter you plan to buy.
  • Capture software: use software that supports DV/1394 capture (Windows Movie Maker, VirtualDub, iMovie, vendor tools) and put the camcorder into playback/VTR mode when capturing.

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Member Avatar for nizzy1115

How about connect it through usb?

Member Avatar for Psyrick

Well, it can be connected but the speed of USB vs Firewire is very significant.

Member Avatar for nizzy1115

siting from this source: http://www.qimaging.com/support/downloads/documents/FirewireUSB.pdf one can see that the only thing you will be using it for is reading data from teh camcorder, so it would be read speed. The read speed of usb 2.0 actually obtains 33 mb/s while firewire obtains 38 mb/s. Thats about 13% difference. While different, its not a huge difference. Is 100 minutes of transfer really that much different than 113 minutes?

Member Avatar for Psyrick

Thanks for the info. I really appreciate your help but after checking the video cam the only connection that allows streaming is the firewire port. It has a USB though but it can only capture the data in the memory card and not in the film.

Member Avatar for nizzy1115

Yeah, i dont know exactly what to tell you. I have looked all over the net for an adapter but with no avail. I'm under the impression that they communicate under two different ways.

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