curious about mixing FW 400 & FW 800

Anyone have any comments on the ramifications of daisy chaining multiple drives, but mixing 400 and 800 due to available connections?

Just curious,

All anecdotes and surmises are welcome,

Marla

There are LOTS of "comments on the ramifications" of this on this forum, and you can search for them or wait for the flood, but to answer the easy question, mixing FW bus rates (400 & 800) will reduce the bus speed to the lowest of the players, i.e., 400, for all devices. By itself, that isn't really a problem. Whether daisy chaining will work well for you is a matter of star alignment and good living. It works for me (knock knock).

Scott

It is written that even if you put a 400 and an 800 on the computer in separate connections, everything runs at 400. That's because there is only one clutch of electronics inside the computer serving all the ports.

To do this well, you need a separate add-on card for each speed and deck. This is also why we steer people away from the machines where you can't physically do that.

If you insist on daisy-chaining a bunch of drives and a videotape machine for capture or playback, you may run into stability problems--dropped frames--sound sync--stuttering motion.

Some people make this process work just fine, some don't We, in several years, have never figured out a magic spell one way or the other. It's like you offended a puppy on your way to work and just destroyed your show's delivery date.

You will get people that swear they've been doing this since the dawn of recorded time, and you will get us, who have *never* been able to make it work.

My official note is that your system becomes *more* unstable by doing that. If that increased instability pushes you over the edge, that's the ball game.

Koz

Hmm. Thanks for your thoughts. More concerned w mixing 4 and 8 than with basic daisychaining. Just ignorant about the speed thing, but it makes sense now that you say they slow to the slower of the 2.

My system has worked OK with up to 3 FW drives at a time, and a DV deck. I generally unplug the drives I don't need whenever possible,

Marla

That's not to say we don't have multiple FireWire drives connected to our machines. We do, but each one has its own add-on firewire card inside the machine.

<<<I generally unplug the drives I don't need whenever possible, >>>

Good idea. All these oddities only happen when you're capturing or playing live video. Most standard file transfers don't care one way or the other.

Don't fill any drives up--anything over 90% full. That makes the system bug-nuts crazy. If you have stuttering frames on capture or play back, disconnect all the external FireWire stuff except the deck and use the internal drive--just long enough to get through the shoot.

Koz