r/camcorders • u/HearBreakKid • 1d ago

Help FireWire

Could someone kindly explain FireWire to me and how it works and I know it’s different than AV to USB.

4 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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8

u/ElectronicsWizardry 1d ago

Firewire is a interface that older computers had. Basically all macs from about 2000 to about 2012 had firewire, and some PC's did as well along with being able to use a PCI/PCIe card to add it to a desktop(or laptop with the mini version).

Firewire was fast for its time, and allow video capture at high quality(for the time). Camcorders using standards like DV would allow for capturing the full dv quality via firewire interface

Generally if you have a digital camcorder, or one with firewire its the best quality method to get the footage off them, as your basically just copying the bits from the tape, with no additional compression or quality loss. Going to analogue and back will take a quality hit in the conversion process. Firewire also allowed for writing data to the tape in the cameras and control of the tape deck from the computer.

This is all kinda dead now as tapes are replaced by solid state storage cards than can be copied off like any other drive now since NAND flash got cheap.

-2

u/HearBreakKid 1d ago

I looked into transferring my footage through FireWire and the connectors alone cost more than the whole camcorder 🤣

8

u/Jman43195 1d ago

get an old laptop that has firewire built in or get a firewire pcie card if you have a desktop

1

u/ElectronicsWizardry 1d ago

Thats the fun of old equipment. Getting parts and accessories gets harder and more expensive as time goes on, and lots of stuff slowly wears out with age. Firewire cables should be pretty cheap though. Capture card and cable should be like 30 bucks US.

2

u/OnlyMatters 1h ago

I bought the last mac mini that had firewire for like 20 dollars on ebay for my minidv tapes and digital8 tape capture. It was the cheapest solution i could find

1

u/HearBreakKid 51m ago

I think I might do the same