help outputting DV over Firewire
 

I am in a pinch, and need a little help.

I am helping to wire for a 6 camera production off of a sony anycast station that our church rented. The cameras are all hooked up via composite cable (200-400 foot runs) the master output to the projection system looks great, all the cameras show up. The church also wants a dvd of each individual camera (2 performances a night for 3 nights) as well as a dvd of the final out from the anycast. I have 6 dvd recorders (Philips DVDR3400) run via firewire from each DV output from the anycast to the DV input on the DVD recorders. The problem is that I cannot get a signal on the DVD players over firewire nor can I get it into a computer. any suggestions?

Unless Sony has changed this with a firmware update, I'm pretty sure that the ilink connector can't give a straight DV output like that. It's meant to connect to an external hard drive and can create the files on that. I can explain more tomorrow when I have my Anycast in front of me.


edit: Just realized you said 6, which means you have a firewire cable hooked up to each of the two DV connectors on all three cards, right? Those are actually DV inputs, but you can change one of them to be a DV output, but it will only output the main mix...not the individual stream.

To do what you are trying to do, you'll need to hook up three external hard drives via the 6 pin firewire connection labeled "iLink" on each card. This will let you record the incoming streams from the cameras on to those external drives. It can put two streams on one drive, hence the reason there is only 1 iLink connector for two inputs.

If you have any more questions, I'll be glad to talk with you over the phone about this.

double check
 

most cameras when in record mode (or camera mode) will not communicate with a firewire device it will appear to have found the device but it wont send data, also check the type of cables you use some firewire cables are unidirectional

I have never heard this before and my own experience shows the opposite: all cameras I worked with so far sent live video via firewire.

Also, I have never heard of unidirectional firewire cables... please someone correct me if I'm wrong. The firewire protocol itself provides for bi-directional communication. The only difference I've seen so far is that 4-pin cables don't have the extra +5V power running on them (you need that if you're connecting multiple firewire cables using repeaters).

I've yet to come across a DV cam that behaves this way. May be there are some that behave this way but certainly not 'most'.

I've never heard of unidirectional IEEE-1394 cables.

Wade,

I want you to know how much I appreciated all of your help getting this thing running. The hard drives have been a lifesaver as all of the DVD players we had connected screw up every performance, and the hard drives have given us an archive. I never would have thought to put a hard drive on this machine like this and have it work so smooth. In this setup the anycast might be the best tool our church has ever used for a mobile broadcast.

As of tomorrow night I will have all of the files on 3 hard drives, anyone know how I need to pull these files off. I am using mac OSX and Final Cut Pro 5.1.2.

Thanks,