4 wire or 6 wire Firewire

Bomoh · Post by **Bomoh** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:05 am

I've been doing videocam to desktop capture for 5 years or so now and the usual 4 wire dv plug on the cam leads into a 6 wire much larger plug on the firewire card in the desktop. Just about to buy myself a new laptopp and note that they all have small 4 wire firewire ports. This means I will be connecting 4 wire from videocam to 4 wire firewire port on laptop. Will there be any problems? Will I still be able to control the videocam from the laptop? Will I lose any funcionality, speed?

Why do some have 6 and some 4 wires? I believe its powered with 6. So what will I lose 4 to 4??

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 9:37 am

Please view:
http://www.firewire-1394.com/firewire-cables.htm

Bomoh · Post by **Bomoh** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:45 am

Thanks.

The answer as I see it is that it makes no difference at all and hopefully my Panasonic GS 400 should communicate with a Dell notebook having the 4 wire dv socket.

Imshallah............. as they say here.

Bomoh · Post by **Bomoh** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 6:49 am

I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 640M and connected it via 4 pin Firewire cable to my Panasonic GS400 and it cannot recognise the camera at all. I've tried other 4 wire cables so it is not a cable problem.

I've tried the camera to my desktop 4 wire to 6 wire and it works perfectly.

I then tried the camera 4 wire to 4 wire on my desktop and it cannot recognise the camera.

This GS400 does not like 4 wire firewire. Anyone have any experience of this or can offer any potential solutions?

Bomoh · Post by **Bomoh** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:05 am

Doing an internet search I now see I probably need to buy an express card 2 port firewire adaptor.

So what is the dv firwire connection on the pc for? Only for external hard drives?

Does anyone out there capture dv from a camera 4 pin to 4 pin?

Am I missing something?

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:56 am

Not having checked Steve's link, here's some brief info.
4-4 pin cable carries video and audio info.
4-6 pin cable carries video and audio info, 2 pins on 6 pin side are not used.
6-6 pin cable caries video and audio info on same pins as 4 pin, the extra two pins are for power, so that items like external harddrives can be powered from the pc, similar to USB powering equipment.

I've captured using both on my desktop and 4-4 on my laptop ok with 3 canon cams.

4 pin cables are notorious for connectivity problems on cheap cables, so although you say have used several, you don't say whether you know any of them work, to know this you need to see them working.

I would start by finding a known to work cable and trying this.

Graham

Alludo USER to USER Web Board

4 wire or 6 wire Firewire

4 wire or 6 wire Firewire

Now it's more difficult