Unplugging ethernet cable during DV transferring?
 

A film enthusiast told me at school that it's best to unplug the ethernet cable or network card (I am unsure) during transferring the DV from your camcorder to computer and vice versa because it can cause weird unstable problems? I don't know if this is true or not...can anyone verify this?

Leaving the network cable connected shouldn't be a problem. However, I wouldn't be transfering large files over the network while capturing video as it could put too much load on the system and may cause problems like dropped frames.

I have a firewire network daisy-chained through a LaCie firewire external drive. I have had batch capture files cut short and timeline freezes during export to tape using files on that drive. I can't get win2kpro to do a diagnostic on the drive so I remain unsure about whether it is damaged or the network interfering. Since I switched to the second internal drive for these jobs I've had no problems. When I have time I'll do a test with the second PC shut down and if no one has reported on this by then I will post the results.

David Hurdon

Maybe it's because you have 2 firewire devices on the same bus (i.e. PCI Firewire card).

2- I can capture fine with the Ethernet cable in.

There are some firewire cards that present difficulty when trying to move data from one drive to another that are attached to the same card. I don't know which manufacturer's firewire cards present this problem, but I do know they exist, and it's reasonably common. For example, there's this old Western Digital firewire interface card I have in one machine that has this problem. But I have some other generic cards in a couple of other computers that don't. Probably has something to do with the firewire chipset, but I haven't investigated too deeply.

As far as the ethernet cable interfering - that would be awful if it were true. But other than trying to do too much at one time (hard drive limitations), there is nothing about an ethernet connection that should interfere with your firewire connection. If it does, something is definitely wrong.

<<<-- Originally posted by Glenn Chan : Maybe it's because you have 2 firewire devices on the same bus (i.e. PCI Firewire card).

That's my first guess as well, Glenn, but the drive itself is still a candidate because the arrangement worked flawlessly for many months. The stalling timeline coincided with the death of a vid card fan, but replacing the card with an upgrade didn't help, so I'm back to either a damaged drive (from multiple power outages)or a bus conflict. I don't have room on my current UPS for the drive. Next one will be protected:)

David Hurdon