Video editing Firewire 400 onto new Macbook Pro's - How?

[photographicsafaris]

Hi all, please help me here, Sort of a photography question.

 

I am looking to upgrade my Current ibook to a Macbook Pro (at long last), but notice that Mac have abandonned

Firewire 400 ports. How are you guys getting video onto Mac's new laptops in the field?

 

Is there a way through an external harddrive, ie you plug the video into the harddrive with Firewire and the

harddrive to the computer with USB2? this does seem counter productive to portability.

Or is there a Firewire 400 - Firewire 800 port adapter? I dont get it!

 

It seams bizarre to me, but I guess I am missing a trick.

 

Many thanks G

[william_john_smith1]

The only model that Apple dropped FW on was the MacBook, the new MacBook Pro has FW 800. You should go to

Apple's site and check the specs.

[jerryrock]

There is a firewire 800 to 400 adapter available

[erik scanhancer]

I fully agree that it is bizarre to drop FW 400 on the Macbook Pro (and FW alltogether on the Macbook), since so many

peripherals for creative users depend on it. Fortunately you can buy an 800 to 400 FW connector, which is cheaply

available. This should help a bit.

[colin_mattson1]

Yes, you just need a FireWire 800-to-400 adapter to use FireWire 400 devices. Cheap, easy. Most hard drives have an

additional port for daisy-chaining devices, so you can just hook into that if you need multiple devices at once.

 

If none of your FireWire devices are the sharing type (shame on them), you can buy a FireWire card for the ExpressCard

slot, or you could buy a FireWire hub.

[Ed_Ingold]

The easiest adapter is an hermaphroditic cable with FW800 at one end and FW400 at the other. I presume Mac notebooks are civilized enough to have a PCMCIA or CardExpress slot. If so, there are cards with have FW400, FW800, USB2 or any combination thereof. The adapter card is the best option since most video cameras have a 4-pin FW400 socket and 4-pin to 6-pin FW cables are common.

[william_john_smith1]

You can get a FW800 to FW400 cable for less then $20, can't be any easier or cheaper then that.

[photographicsafaris]

Thanks for the responses

 

Edward... "hermaphroditic cable.. 800-400" I am not PC enough not to comment on that! Thats err interesting

 

Finally trawled through apples website and found only one Firewire 400 express card 3/4 adapter. But no Firewire hermaphrodites (heh heh) and no 800-400 adapters either.

 

Quick search on ebay and some enterprising Canadian has a "4-pin-FW400-to-9pin-FW800-Bilingual-cable", (must be French-Canadian) - just what I was looking for!

 

Is it just me or does Apple simply not think things like this through... Oh yes sure we'll ditch the FW400, we've something much better... It is only used for harddrives, but hey sod how we'll get people to run DV into their computers There cant be anybody buying a MACbook Pro who would want to capture video to use on those programs that they sell with em Weve got a great built in camcorder, that'll be fine.

Yes sure let the punters figure it out theyre bright fellows!

 

I tried to run the camcorder through the harddrive using 4-6 firewire and then connect to the mac using USB2, and surprise surprise: No camera connected, but when running firewire to the mac it recognised the camera immediately. DV does not run through USB2... and yet we persist using USB2, and drop a better technology.

 

As is obvious I am looking to drop video from the Camcorder direct to the laptop using the 4-6pin firewire cable I have been using for ages, also i use the 6pin to 6pin Firewire cable for my Epson R800.! Now I accept that FW400 has gone and its 800 only.

But

Jobs you are a "jobs worth"

 

Regards Graham