On the Way Out: FireWire and Matte Screens?

Apple used Firewire to solve a capture problem for consumers AND
professionals desiring to use mini-DV tape cameras. Today that
original 'issue' has become less and less of a problem as more and
more consumers are opting for tapeless solutions for capturing motion.
Canon and Sony have both just introduced prosumer full-frame DSLRs
with HD video, and along with several other recent development it is
apparent that their views for the future are to move all consumer/
prosumer video capture to a tapeless capture workflow. What Apple did
in the way of TDM and even IP over Firewire was never meant to be the
primary purpose for providing Firewire. IT was first and foremost a
best of class solution for getting video off a moving tape onto a hard
drive without frame drops. Advantages/disadvantages to tape aside,
consumers by and large prefer tapeless solutions for many reasons:
inconvenience in slow transfer time for tape and the issues of
accidental over-writing on tape among the primary ones.

I service a lot of mac users. Few of them really need Firewire. They
use external drives primarily for backup and for streaming audio for
iTunes or photos for iPhoto and USB2 handles those tasks as easily as
Firewire. I have 4 laptops, all with firewire, but rarely am I in a
situation that would require firewire. Anyone doing serious video work
in the field should be using a pro laptop. The weight/cost difference
is miniscule compared with all the other gear you'd be using.

Jeffrey

On 10/28/08 4:41 AM, "mec1" <mecwenhaston.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> As an technician who had to repair ibooks with now screen o/p I can assure you
> that without firewire and T mode my life and the users life would have been
> disasterous. I could get the user working in about an hour on a new machine
> without any dismantling. To bad for future mac owners if either of these two
> options go missing

Yes, however, the Macbooks are orders of magnitude easier to get to the hard
drive than the iBooks were. So the difficulty of disassembling an iBook
doesn't really apply.

--
John C. Welch

John Gruber at daringfireball.net posted this link:

http://brockerhoff.net/bb/viewtopic.php?p=2555#2555

A far better list of engineering trade offs than I came up with.

--
Michael

On 28-Oct-08, at 1:41 AM, Jeffrey McPheeters wrote:

> Apple used Firewire to solve a capture problem for consumers AND
> professionals desiring to use mini-DV tape cameras. Today that
> original 'issue' has become less and less of a problem as more and
> more consumers are opting for tapeless solutions for capturing
> motion...
>
> I service a lot of mac users. Few of them really need Firewire. They
> use external drives primarily for backup and for streaming audio for
> iTunes or photos for iPhoto and USB2 handles those tasks as easily as
> Firewire. I have 4 laptops, all with firewire, but rarely am I in a
> situation that would require firewire. Anyone doing serious video work
> in the field should be using a pro laptop. The weight/cost difference
> is miniscule compared with all the other gear you'd be using.

That is a good summary' except that it is subject to change as
consumers of many flavours and colours may begin to hang on to older
equipment with the current revolution in getting a Green Conscience;
inspired by black money catching fire in concrete vaults while we sleep.

Many of us will get a new computer by upgrading our OS and Apps; not
a bad fate after all. I'm getting a LaCie Fire / USB multiport hub too.

George

So who in their right mind would want to do editing on a MacBook anyway?

<I don't fish with a pocket fishing pole either>


david emerick

dnemerick428 asked:
> So who in their right mind would want to do editing on a MacBook anyway?

My mom is a teacher. She records school plays and similar events, cuts
them on her MacBook and burns DVDs for the parents. My sister
organizes girlscout camps, records them and makes movies on her
MacBook which are shown at girlscout parent events. Many of my friends
use their MacBooks to create snowboarding and holiday movies.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using MacBooks for this task.
They're more than powerful enough for editing movies; people used to
edit video on hardware which was less than 10% as fast as these
MacBooks and had lower screen resolution.

Additionally, many of the people I know who own MacBooks use external
Firewire disks for their backups and photo collections.

I think a lot of the people I know won't update to newer MacBooks for
a long time, or if they do, will be surprised to learn that a lot of
their hardware will no longer work.

Lukas

At 1:27 AM -0700 10/30/08, David Emerick wrote:
>So who in their right mind would want to do editing on a MacBook anyway?

College kids on a tight budget but with the knowledge of and desire
to make video...?

On Oct 30, 2008, at 4:27 AM, David Emerick wrote:

> So who in their right mind would want to do editing on a MacBook
> anyway?
>
> <I don't fish with a pocket fishing pole either>

I assume you mean video editing. What's wrong with it? If you choose
the 2.4GHz option it'll be better spec'd any MacBook Pro made before
2008. The only option related to performance not provided is an
internal 7200rpm drive which is A) not essential and B) easily
remedied by replacing the drive yourself. True, the screen resolution
is lower but 1280x800 isn't *that* much smaller than 1440x900. Who
would want to do video editing on a laptop screen anyway? The MacBook
is just as capable at driving an external monitor as the MacBook Pro.

> At 1:27 AM -0700 10/30/08, David Emerick wrote:
>> So who in their right mind would want to do editing on a MacBook anyway?

All of the people that Apple sold MacBooks to with the promise of a digital
lifestyle where they could edit their movies (among other iLifey things)

All of those folks are very much in their right minds.

--chuck

i thought this might be of interest to those of you who are wondering
if apple plans to phase out the firewire ports. this article might
indicate they are not.


nicky

WD(R) Speeds Up My Passport(TM) Studio(TM) Drive With FireWire(R) 800 Interface - AOL Money & Finance

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/qp/pr/_a/wdr-speeds-up-my-passporttm-studiotm/rfid153757167

chuck goolsbee wrote:
>> At 1:27 AM -0700 10/30/08, David Emerick wrote:
>>> So who in their right mind would want to do editing on a MacBook anyway?
>
> All of the people that Apple sold MacBooks to with the promise of a digital
> lifestyle where they could edit their movies (among other iLifey things)
>
> All of those folks are very much in their right minds.

Especially those of us still using a G4 or G5 for out desktop computer. A previous gen Intel MacBook is way faster at video than either of these generations.

Says he who owns a FireWire but no USB camcorder.

David

On 10/31/08 at 5:19 AM, danowell.com (Dan O'Donnell) wrote:

>At 1:27 AM -0700 10/30/08, David Emerick wrote:
>>So who in their right mind would want to do editing on a MacBook anyway?
>
>College kids on a tight budget but with the knowledge of and desire
>to make video...?

Agreed, certainly... that said, I'll point back to what I noted
before: when those kids (*especially* ones on a budget) go out
shopping for a camcorder, the overwhelming odds are that they're
going to find USB models, not FireWire. Heck, there's a good
chance that anyone buying a camcorder in the last year or two
has a USB model.

FireWire on a camcorder is something you have to deliberately
look for, these days.


Travis Butler

For those lamenting the loss of FireWire Target Disk mode, this USB
product provides a similar means for transferring files at high speed
from one computer to another without having to do any configuration
or install additional software. It is price competitive with a
simple FireWire cable, and...it works both Mac to Mac, and PC to Mac!

Targus High-Speed File Transfer Cable ($40)
http://www.targus.com/us/product_details.asp?sku=ACC96US

I have yet to try this product myself. If anyone else tries one, i'd
like to hear if it is also useful for troubleshooting as FWTDM is.

Randy B. Singer • Mac OS X Routine Maintenance • http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

It looks to me like if you really must have firewire your choices are:

a) original plastic MacBook, still for sale, still has firewire 400 (I
think the specs on the official Apple page don't mention this mac, the
support page says it has firewire.) Costs $1,124 to match the low end
aluminum MacBook in memory and hard drive. Saves you $175 has significantly
slower graphics.

b) MacBook + Mac mini. Use Mac mini as a digital hub (I think you can put
time machine backups on to a mini from a laptop remotely). Mac mini still
has firewire 400. Cheapest MacBook + mini is $1898. Disadvantages - mini
not portable so can't move camera footage off camera while away from mini.
Fast graphics, small screen.

c) MacBook Pro. Firewire 800. Cost is $1999. Larger screen (a plus to me),
more weight, even faster graphics.

d) MacBook and new camera. I didn't price this out but it seems like most
HD cameras are around $600? So about the same prices as MacBook + mini.

i spot checked some of the cameras here:
<http://reviews.cnet.com/best-hd-camcorders/>

I didn't find any without USB. I found one (the high end Sony) that had
both. All had some sort of flash memory capability as well. All also had
some sort of HDMI or component video out

One of the selling points of Firewire was that it didn't require a Host
(computer) to operate. Does anyone know if older firewire only cameras
have the ability of copying data to a hard drive that is plugged into it,
without needing a computer? If so, then I would get a firewire+USB
enclosure, use the firewire to copy data from camera and then USB
connection to copy to computer.

Kevin

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Kevin van Haaren <kevinvanhaaren.net> wrote:
> One of the selling points of Firewire was that it didn't require a Host
> (computer) to operate. Does anyone know if older firewire only cameras
> have the ability of copying data to a hard drive that is plugged into it,
> without needing a computer? If so, then I would get a firewire+USB
> enclosure, use the firewire to copy data from camera and then USB
> connection to copy to computer.

Firewire has its own processor, so it doesn't need a "computer" to
operate. That's why you can have FireWire Disk Transfer mode, but not
USB Disk Transfer mode. It is one of the things that not having
FireWire will miss.

FireWire was designed for massive data transfers. It didn't depend
upon an OS to process the data, it simply wrote it out to the disk as
quickly as possible. You could (in theory) get a FireWire disk and
connect it up to a FireWire camcorder and transfer the data directly
to the disk.

USB needs CPU intelligence and was never designed for massive data
copy. It expected input from a mouse or keyboard. It might even write
to a printer -- a rather slow data device. It was simply never
designed for data transfer.

But, Intel and Microsoft didn't like FireWire, and pushed for USB 2.0
which at least in theory was as fast as FireWire. PCs came with USB
ports, but not FireWire. In the end, it is the Betamax vs. VHS
argument all over again. Betamax may "have been better", but all the
videos were in VHS format, so people bought VHS players. The same
here. PCs came with USB 2.0 ports, so peripherals manufacturers
created USB 2.0 disks and USB 2.0 cameras.

I miss FireWire. My old iPod sync'd up much faster to my Mac via
Firewire than my new iPods do using USB 2.0. I liked the Disk Transfer
mode and have used it over and over again for upgrades and for fixing
problems when a computer couldn't boot. But, Firewire was getting
harder and harder to find. It took me a week to find an external
Firewire disk that didn't cost more than twice as much as its USB
twin.

It now appears that the real push to eliminate Firewire came from the
redesign that limited the space for ports. There simply wasn't room
for two USB ports and a Firewire port, and something had to go. The
decision was to have two USB ports and eliminate the FireWire port.
Maybe if Firewire was truly more popular, Apple would have found
another solution.

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com

re the Targus High-Speed File Transfer Cable ($40) referred to by Randy B Singer I have tried to purchase one of these, but it appears (at this stage anyway) that international sales are not accepted by the Company. If any reader in the USA is willing to assist me (by means of PayPal or any other suitable path) I would be much obliged. Please contact me directly - norm.bzrclear.net.nz [New Zealand]. TIA

On or about 11/3/08 12:46 PM, thus spake "norm.bzr" <norm.bzrclear.net.nz>:

> If any reader in the USA is willing to assist me (by means of PayPal or any
> other suitable path) I would be much obliged. Please contact me directly -
> norm.bzrclear.net.nz [New Zealand].

Since I used to live in NZ and had exactly the same kind of problem, I'm
delighted to help. Just tell me what to do. m.

--
matt neuburg, phd = matttidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/

Hello Norm,

I found the same thing.

Found that Dick Smith in Australia keep the product, URL
<http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/en/product/XH0482>

Hope this helps.

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 1:26 AM, Travis Butler <tbutlermac.com> wrote:

Ryoichi "Roy" Morita

I doubt that the Targus High Speed cable will work between a Mac and another Mac unless
both have working operating systems.
Thus it will not be a robust substitute for Firewire target disk mode.

Gus