Firewire Connection Conundrum

[Mark Wheaton]

I have just installed the various overpriced firewire to analog solutions in my G4 including the Echofire driver and the Canopus DV to Analog box. It all works but here is the question:
How do you hook up various items to the two firewire ports on the G4?
I have:
(1) firewire harddrive,
DV camcorder (for playing in DV tapes) and
the Canopus box.

The Canopus box has two firewire connections:
a 4 pin on the front and a six pin on the back.
I hooked the 6 pin to the G4 and the camcorder to the front(4 pin).
This method results in the camera being invisible to video digitizing programs such as FCPro.
Hooking the camera to a firewire Hub is also a no go. It appears you must hook the camera direct to the G4??
Doing this and having the Canopus box on the other FW port on the G4 means no available ports for the hard Drive.
What specifically are people doing to get more than two fire wire devices connected to their computers?
Any detailed connection info and recommended parts would be greatly appreciated.

[Mark Wheaton]

well no one is interested in this issue...
but if I do get responses I will detail how finally got it all to actually work.

[donpietra]

same problem here...

still no solution found...

let us know...

don pietra

[littlerobot]

Why not add a firewire PCI card.

[Mark Wheaton]

The solution using the Canopus box is this:
One port from the computer goes to the front of the box using a 6 pin (G4) to 4pin (Canopus) cable.
the DV camcorder is connected to the back of the canopus box using a 4 pin (camera) to 6 pin (canopus)
connect the Video In (composite) to the output of your VHS deck. connect the Video Out to the NTSC monitor.
connect the audio in and out also.
use the other port on the G4 for the firewire drive.
On the Canopus box, use the input selector to change to Digital when playing back fom the computer or transferring from the DV camcorder, switch to analog when digitizing from VHS.
In FCPro, create a Capture preset that uses DV (not Sony DV) when capturing from VHS.also you need to set the Device control to None. This is also true if you transfer from DV and it does not have timecode.
Remember that the Canopus box only sees 32 KHz and 48KHz (not 44.1)
I also use the EchoFire software which allows playback from Pro Tools. I open the transferred video in Quicktime Pro and reduce the window size and Save.
The way to test whether you are connected properly is to open the Video/Audio Settings in FCPro and see if Apple Firewire is selected as External Video. Also, upon loading, if FCPro can't detect your camera, it will warn you. The trick with the camera is to have it On and in VTR mode.
I am still testing this and any other more experienced comments would be welcome. I think it will be useful to have detailed info which unfortunately is not present in any of the manuals.

[Mike Thornton]

You can also get Firewire hubs say one in from the computer with 4 or 6 outs to your various Firewire Periphals

[Digi-Slime-NYC]

Just out of curiousity, how "responsive" is the video? Does it drag down protools performance? Video performance?

How fast is your CPU and what Protools system are you using?

[Mark Wheaton]

Regarding firewire Hubs. when I tried one, i found that as far as digital camcorders are concerned, attaching one to a hub makes it invisible to the application (FCPro for instance) and therefore you can't transfer video. It also seems to hide the Canopus Box. If there is any insight as to whether this is an anomoly or there is a particular brand that does work???

[Mark Wheaton]

regarding responsiveness of video. It is too soon to really know for me. It seems fine so far. I have a G4 dual gig (with multiprocessor folder removed) and 1.5 gig RAM. I am running OS 9.2.2 and PT 5.1.1 with a MixPlus.