New USB to FireWire Adapter!
 

According to the usbfirewire website, Pixela Corp of Japan has supposedly created a USB to FireWire Adapter that will be available by March 28, 2009 for $119.00. This kit is supposed to allow you to connect your camcorder to a USB port on a Laptop or Desktop PC.

NTSC version Website link: USB to FireWire DV Adapter - NTSC - US Version

Pal version website link: http://www.usbfirewire.com/Parts/rr-300008044.html

Brochure: http://www.usbfirewire.com/brochures...o.FireWire.pdf

Sorry, not news... we discussed this back in September:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/non-linea...e-adapter.html

It's actually been available for a year or two. Thanks though,

Sorry... I should have done a full search. :-)

Anyone know if it actually works? People ask about this all the time, and the conventional wisdon is, you can't.

From what I see in the previous discussion, it converts to MPEG-1. Not what you want. Looks like a Firewire Expresscard is a little more useful if you own a laptop without a firewire port.

Not to mention far less expensive.

It is totally possible to run firewire through USB2. Pinnacle has done it for more then 4 years now. Pinnacl Studio and Pinnacle/Avid Liquid have had a break out box that was hooked up via USB2. This box was mainly a way to get uncompressed analog video in and out of the system. In the case of Studio this was cheaper analog connections but the Liquid Pro break out box had component connections as well. What both of these devices also had however was a firewire port that allowed any camera or deck to be hooked up to the break out box via firewire. This is effect passed a firewire signal down a USB2 connection. In fact when the break out box was connected to a PC it would act as two devices. A USB2 based device and a second firewire device. The break out box is pretty cheap but sadly there are only 32 bit windows drivers for these break out boxes.

Those that say it is impossible only look at the situation from one point of view. Just because it doesn't work in the normal way doesn't mean it is impossible. The firewire stream just has to be packed into a USB2 stream to trick the computer into seeing two hardware devices. You can send any other form of data through USB including keyboard and mouse data and there is no reason why the firewire data cannot be packed the same way. Pinnacle is solid proof that it works perfectly. All we need is to get Pinnacle to create drivers for these devices to help out the people who have the new Mac Books.

You don't have to use the Studio software with these break out boxes either. All you need is the hardware driver and then the firewire connection works exactly as any other firewire device. I have used it with Premiere CS3, CS4 and Scenalyzer live.

It makes no send to me at all as to why the device listed above would need a NTSC version and a PAL version. A firewire device to a computer is just a firewire device. It doesn't really care if it is NTSC PAL or HDV. Clearly that device is doing something funky to get this function to work.

If you are on a PC just pick up a copy of Studio with it's USB2 break out box. If you are on a Mac write to Pinnacle and beg for drivers.

There's a significant difference between the Pinnacle hardware and this Pixela product. The former 'merely' repacks FireWire DIF packets into a USB2.0 compliant stream. As you state, a virtual DV device driver enables software to see a FireWire DV device via the USB2.0 interface. The captured video is true DV format.

The Pixela product transcodes DV to MPEG1 (not even MPEG2!). This is why there are PAL and NTSC versions.

Im pretty sure the NEW macbook13inch users will find this useful.
Since the new 13in Macbooks dont supply a firewire port now.

EDIT: I read its not compatible with MAC. sorry
unless they run VMWARE/Bootcamp/Parallels.

I think an ExpressCard FireWire Adapter would be the way to go for MacBooks.

Chris,

The 13inch Macbook doesn't have an expresscard slot. For the Macbook Pro I just saw firewire 800-400 (4 pin mini) adapter cables on my recent trip to Hong Kong for about $20. For the smaller macbook the cheapest new white Macbook with firewire seems to be the way to go since they upgraded the graphics card.

Dan

Ha, shows you what I know about MB, thanks for the correction Dan!

The best solution for the silver Mac Books is to try to convince Pinnacle to make Mac drivers for their Studio break out box. Pinnacle already has a analog only version of that break out box for the mac so they only need to add in the firewire port and the drivers and they will be good to go.

USB to firewire has been around for quite a number of years and not just with Pinnacle. All you have to do is look. Here's an example from creative:

USB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Editor

The device linked is not a USB to Firewire adapter ... it is a digital video encoding device that accepts a 25Mbs (DV) input via Firewire, recompresses it to one of a few options -- none of which are DV -- and attaches to a computer by USB. Hardly an adapter, and no solution at all for someone that wants to work with a device that outputs DV, or HDV, or any such typical source format.