Anyone a firewire expert?!

kaawaazoo

Fairly tricky one...

I have a DV out on my Sony Video Camera... I plug my 4 pin firewire into it and it comes out through a 6 pin firewire into my laptop. Simple.

However, what I want to know is there a way in which I could take two separate feeds from the camera;... eg. could I plug a double adapter into my DV out on the camera and take 2 feeds out from it?

If there is such an adapter let me know!

Cheers

c-note

firewire (as you may be aware) is digital. 1001010010

i'd imagine that a request is sent from your laptop to the sony;
(hey there i'm lappy and i'm ready to talk)
and the sony then replies and spits out a bitstream (1&0's) to your laptop
(hey there lappy i'm sony i'm a camera and i want to send you a video file)
which your laptop is expecting and knows what to do with.
once the data is sent the sony prob sends a message "data sent" to which the laptop may reply "data recieved" and everyones happy.

the problem with "splitting" or tapping into the firewire, is that whatever the second device is that your sending it to, wont be expecting any info and wont know what to do with the 1&0's when they're recieved.

if it were an analogue signal you could split it multiple times as the senders and recievers of analoge signals arnt "aware" of eachother. (analogue: i'm sending out this info and if someone(s) wants to pick it up thats great, if not i dont care. I'm not telling you when i'm starting or finishing or what kind of signal it is: you'll have to figure that out for yourself)

your sony may have an analogue output (a yellow female socket?) which i'm sure you could get a splitter for and send to 2 or more screens.
if you want to send the raw data of the video file (eg to a computer).. afaik you can only send it to one device at a time


[edit]
on the other hand there are such things as "firewire hubs"
i dont know if they are just like usb hubs, but a quick search refrences "firewire networks"
it may be what your looking for but you'd have to do some investigating!

kaawaazoo

cheers for that... really interesting...

what about physically cutting a firewire cable, connecting it to two separate firewire cables and splitting it that way or am I being silly?

c-note

well while that would be physically possible i doubt it would work....

when the camera sends the video to the laptop, its not actually sending "video" per se. its just sending information, (1's and 0's)
so the laptop has to know what the info is (eg. its an avi, its 640*480, its 25 frames per second, etc) so that the laptop knows how to read the data.

if you physically split the cable and connected it to 2 laptops and the camera, the camera may become confused. (hey who am i talking to here? laptop 1 or laptop 2?)
and the laptops may not know if they are talking to the camera or to eachother...

i guess your after some kind of repeater... so that the data is sent to the repeater which can then send it independantly to the two laptops.
(i dont know if a firewire hub or network can do this?)

if the camera has an analogue out, you could easily physically split the cable into a Y. this is because the analogue output does output "video"
and 1,2 or 100 different device could tap into that information (NOT 1&0's)

maybe if you post what you aims are (exactly what you're trying to achive, set up etc) someone could suggest a solution?.

in the mean time if you do find a solution i'd be interested to hear about it !

kaawaazoo

kaawaazoo wrote: »

cheers for that... really interesting...

what about physically cutting a firewire cable, connecting it to two separate firewire cables and splitting it that way or am I being silly?

Unlike analogue signals, where an incomplete or noisy connection can still result in a successful signal transfer, a single bit (1 or 0) missing from a digital connection can feck the whole thing up.