firewire capture & external drives

altphase wrote on 5/19/2005, 1:39 PM
This may be more of an issue with the Windows OS, but I'm wondering if anyone else is having such a hard time using external fw drives with Vegas while trying to capture. I'm using V5 and I cannot seem to capture fw from a JVC BR-DV3000 to an external fw drive (Lacie). When I have both devices connected things get really strange. I can see the external drive but I cannot write to it or select it as a capture drive. I know this works with other devices (like right from a camcorder). I'm also seeing a lot of delayed write error when using external drives and a video deck connected to the PC. This stuff works so good on a Mac it's a shame the PCs just don't get along with fw as good (this is my experience with many different PCs including my home computer).

Comments

tjburton wrote on 5/19/2005, 2:08 PM
If you are using XP SP2, you may want to take a look at the Microsoft Hotfix listed below...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222

This has cleared some issues up for me...

BillyBoy wrote on 5/19/2005, 4:30 PM
Also avoid daisy chaining (connecting one firewire device directly to another) and instead give each their own port. Most external cards have 3-4 inputs.

Another sometimes overlooked problem is the firewire card you are using isn't 100% firewire compliant. When I built my last system I got a top of the line ASUS motherboard that claimed to have built-in firewire support. Well it does, but it only works one way with Vegas. It can capture just fine, but drops frames like crazy if trying to print to tape.

I resolved by replacing with a known 100% compliant firewire card. Everything has worked fine ever since even with multiple firewire devices as long as they all have their own port to plug into.
je@on wrote on 5/19/2005, 5:54 PM
With due respect to BB, I have 3 fw hard drives and a dvd writer chained with nary a problem. No problem capturing to ext drive. Non-compliant fw card can cause problems. I'd stick to ADS or SIIG fw cards.
Curtsong wrote on 5/19/2005, 8:11 PM
I've had the same issues. The only way I've found to work with this is to capture to my C: drive then move the files to my external drives. I don't have the luxery of using my firewire ports indepedently, with my other interfaces such as my Motu 828. However, I haven't thought about using my firewire port on the daisychain of the hard drive I store my video on. Would that work?
johnmeyer wrote on 5/19/2005, 9:47 PM
If you have XP SP1, then read this and download the patch:

Firewire 1394 Solutions


If you have XP SP2, then read this and download the patch:

Performance of 1394 devices may decrease after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2
Liam_Vegas wrote on 5/19/2005, 10:29 PM
I generally capture thru Firewire (of course) to a USB drive on my laptop. This has been (for me) a totally reliable setup.