The biggest problem is that there is no one providing a guarantee of one device's compatability with the FW protocol as compared to another. So no matter how good the Apple built-in controller is, you are going to get crap happening depending on the devices connected to it. Jeff is correct, FireWire was specified so that devices can run at different speeds (an advantage over USB) and should not be a problem... at least in theory. In the end, whether you daisy chain or use different ports, you are still using one controller so that there are more collisions and less efficiency (but again, this should still work fine for what you are doing).

You could drop $50 and get a PCI FW card... but most likely the problem is the 2MB buffer on the drive. Can you borrow another drive and see if it works better? Have you tried running both on the FW 400 ports?

I would try different ports and configurations, as Mark suggests, as a means of determining if your drive will be usable. The small buffer certainly could be part of the problem. Have you talked to the LaCie support yet? In the past they have been very helpful and seem well versed on Mac issues. Have you looked on their site for new drivers or firmware revisions?

ive given up for now. im just going to log to an internal and move it afterwards. so silly... i now have an issue with batch capturing. im willing to bet its xl1 related, and im going to do a search on it now.

thanks guys.

FW speed of cameras are usually stated in the manual. AFAIK, cameras come in 100Mbps speeds which will in the end dictate the transfer speed of the FW bus anyway.

Heath, I think you should try daisy chaining the devices - G5-HD-camera.

Also, there was some mention in another forum that the rear FW ports be used rather than the front. I'm guessing that you did connect the HD to the rear but connected the camera on the front.

Try the daisy chain method and let us know :)

cheers,
Peter

ive tried the daisy chain every which way. i havent tried plugging the cam in the back in stead of the front though. ill give that a shot.

Heath,

Once you have tried connecting the camera to the rear ports, and if that does not change your situation, can you bypass the external HD altogether (make your internal the scratch disk) are you able to capture properly? This would be a test.

cheers,
Peter

yes things function fine without the fw drive in the loop.

Can you borrow another FW drive to try?

<<<-- Originally posted by Heath Hays : yes things function fine without the fw drive in the loop. -->>>

Do you have any other devices attached to the FW ports (like iSight)?

Can you think of anything that is different (changed or added) to the G5, from the time you could capture properly to the time that things started going wrong?

cheers,
Peter