13" MacBook Pro for video in-out?

Folks-

This is a toughie under the current configs; searches reveal nothing special.
I wonder if anyone's tackled it successfully?

A current, least expensive MBP 13" at 1199.00 offers one FireWire 800 port. Okay, there's my ingest form camera or deck via Sonnet 800-to-400 adapter port. How about external storage as a scratch disk-- I don't want video on my system drive.

The model in question offers an SD port (thank you so very much, Apple marketing, forgetting you put "Pro" in the model name and removing the Express34 port from all but the unwieldy 17" and also a Gigabit ethernet port, along with two USB 2.0 ports which I assume are dead meat, being packet-driven, not streaming.

Has anyone tried an external gigabit drive using that port?

Has anyone located a clever SD port adapter for FireWire? The port is specked at 240 Mb/s. That could be useful for DV25 Firewire ingest, leaving the 800 port free for a scratch disk.

Has anyone found a SD port adapter for eSata?

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Cycle your timeline track size with Shift-T !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

>Has anyone located a clever SD port adapter for FireWire? The port is specked at 240 Mb/s.

Very unlikely as Firewire 400 has a ceiling of 400Mb/s.

The two possible connections for your media drive are GigE and the FW800 port. But for GigE it depends on the card used by Apple, as Walter Biscardi was dropping connection on a certain Mac Pro running a SAN. Also, Apple doesn't qualify GigE to be used as an interface for a media drive.

What I'll actually do is get a FW800 hub and run both devices off it.



www.strypesinpost.com

An SD to Firewire adaptor for DV/HDV capture should work technically as it only use Firewire 100 which is well within the bandwidth for the port ... but does one exist? don't know.

You could have a look at the MOTU V4HD as an option ... it offers full I/O capabilities much like the AJA IoHD except it offers DVCPro SD/HD hardware encoding/decoding vs the AJA's ProRes hardware codec. More importantly, unlike the AJA unit, it doesn't hog the entire FW bus so you can daisy chain your storage / camera from the V4HD hardware.

Other options? Yes, the iSCSI solutions for storage are a good option although as Strypes notes, that won't work with Ethernet cards that don't support Jumbo frames ... you should be fine with the MBP but the new i7 iMac's have controllers that don't support this (big Apple fail sadly).

If capture via FW800 from DV/HDV daisy chained through a suitable external hard disc is an option for you then the (original) Matrox MXO remains a dependable 8-bit output option.

Cheers
Andy

Thanks, Gerard, thanks, Andy.

But won't a shared hub or daisychain bring up that chatty FireWire issue where either capture or hard disk drops frames? I'd need both operating smoothly to capture to hard drive.

That gigabit ethernet port is looking better all the time...

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Cycle your timeline track size with Shift-T !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Quote

But won't a shared hub or daisychain bring up that chatty FireWire issue where either capture or hard disk drops frames?

Only way to be sure is to find out.

Quote

That gigabit ethernet port is looking better all the time...

I think a Firewire hub is a better bet. Using Ethernet for storage is just too damn complicated.

>Using Ethernet for storage is just too damn complicated.

I second that. I mentioned it because it's used as a SAN by EditShare, and walter biscardi runs a GigE SAN, so it's credible.

But the problem with ethernet drives, is that they don't mount as local storage, but as network drives. And as most network drives go, most of them aren't HFS+, but rather Ext1 or Ext3, and they have their own OS which you can access and configure. Macs access network drives via Samba. Not exactly sure how Walter configured his or how MetaLAN works.



www.strypesinpost.com

>But won't a shared hub or daisychain bring up that chatty FireWire issue where either capture or
>hard disk drops frames?

Theoretically no. But it's just like saying FW800 is backward compatible (it is, that's the standard), and we saw in a previous thread, that it's not necessarily so.

Once you hook up a FW400 connection together with a FW800 drive (i'll get to daisy chaining later), the host adapter (the card), will run what it calls a "billingual" mode to allow both devices to operate at their usual speeds (as opposed to "beta" mode, where all devices have to be FW800). Based on this, Firewire is more intelligent than USB, and also more complex. To slow down a FW800 connection to that of FW400, you need to daisy chain it such that the FW800 signal is at the end of the branch, behind the FW400 device.



www.strypesinpost.com

I have had less trouble running media on a USB2 drive than I have daisy-chaining a firewire camera and a firewire hard drive. When daisy-chaining, it seems I'm always getting "device not found".

I have edited XDCamHD, DVCProHD, HDV, and DV via USB2. I don't know what would happen with uncompressed HD - I expect it wouldn't work.

For a job with a decent budget, I suggest a MBP with two firewire ports. For a small budget job using a compressed codec, I'd suggest a USB2 drive.

I have also edited footage off the system drive. It is not recommended (and I do not recommend it), but it is possible.

> I don't know what would happen with uncompressed HD - I expect it wouldn't work.

Yes, it won't work. You won't get any form of real time playback on either USB, FW400 or FW800. You need a fast enough RAID on an eSATA/Fibre/SAS connection.

I did work on a USB when the Firewire chip shorted. There was no show stopping issues, but on the whole it was quite sluggish. It made DvcproHD feel like I was cutting XDCAM EX. I can't run through a dialogue scene at double speed, etc... Most compressed formats can stream quite easily off a single hard drive on even a USB connection these days. But it doesn't provide optimal performance.

Also, there are guys who run into random USB issues with DV/DV50 capture. The solution is usually to get a firewire drive.


>When daisy-chaining, it seems I'm always getting "device not found".

This is a separate issue. I'm suspecting that it depends on what you are using to adapt the FW400 signal into a billingual connection. I don't think Loren has had an issue with the Sonnet adapter. What i'd say is get a hub to avoid daisy chaining, as daisy chaining is more complicated.


You are unlikely to get a FW adapter for the SD card, mainly because the market is too small? The people who are likely to buy it are the folks trying to capture from a DV camera. At 240Mb/s, it slows down your hard drive connection, and most people do have a USB/FW port already. Alternatively, there is no stopping you from using an SD card as a scratch disk (but kinda hilarious).


>I suggest a MBP with two firewire ports

Do they still make them with 2 ports? I'm still on the previous generation laptops, because I love the connectivity on that thing- I don't need to buy a USB hub, I can run two FW hard drives without daisy chaining, and if i needed an additional eSATA slot, I can buy an expresscard adapter.



www.strypesinpost.com

Useful discussion, much thanks.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Cycle your timeline track size with Shift-T !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com