I was recently given an old Sony DSR-PD170 MiniDV cam

Mint condition with a bunch of goodies (bag, lenses, external mic, etc.)

It also came with a FireStore FS4, which is what I was really interested in because although I have no real use for the camera itself, I do have a ton of old MiniDV and D8 tapes that I've been putting off capturing.

Mainly because my other tape cams use Firewire and my current laptop isn't compatible.

Anyways, I've tested the FS4 with my older mini notebook (Sony Viao TX-770P) using Firewire and it worked great, but that notebook is very limited when it comes to editing, so I just transferred the AVI files to my current laptop via SD cards (slow process)

My question is, would I be able to use a cable like this to transfer files from the FS4 directly to my current laptop using the USB port?

https://s30.postimg.org/i0zyzct9d/usbto6pinfirewire.jpg

I know I'm not able to connect my cameras directly to USB using Firewire, but in the case of the FS4, aren't the files that are captured already converted to AVI's?

I figure it would be an easy drag and drop, but would like to know for sure before ordering the cable.

No. That cable should not exist. USB and FireWire are two different protocols.

Imagine for a second you have a garden hose. You want to use it to power your electric weed whacker. You could gaff tape a plug onto the end of the hose, but the water won't magically become electricity. That's what this cable does.

USB and FireWire are very different things. Depending on the laptop, you can get an ExpressCard FireWire adapter: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-ExpressCard-Firewire-Adapter-EC13942/dp/B000RKUKMG so you can plug your PD170 directly into your laptop.

Don't think that will work. On the Mac it is a simple matter to do this however, there are inexpensive Thunderbolt to Firewire converters. I have the Apple one which IIRC cost around $20 and it works perfectly with my Sony HVR-M15U tape deck. It is not a passive adapter however, there is some circuitry inside and it gets surprisingly hot also! There are also thunderbolt docks with firewire ports.

Have not kept up with things on the PC side, do newer machines use thunderbolt?

No. That cable should not exist. USB and FireWire are two different protocols.

Imagine for a second you have a garden hose. You want to use it to power your electric weed whacker. You could gaff tape a plug onto the end of the hose, but the water won't magically become electricity. That's what this cable does.

USB and FireWire are very different things. Depending on the laptop, you can get an ExpressCard FireWire adapter: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-ExpressCard-Firewire-Adapter-EC13942/dp/B000RKUKMG so you can plug your PD170 directly into your laptop.


My current laptop doesn't have a pcmcia port, so no go on the express card (that was the first thing I looked at years ago)

Now, I can understand a fire wire cable that runs from the camera to the USB port simply won't work because the footage needs to be captured and converted, however, what confuses me about the Firestore is that when I plug it into my old laptop, it functions just like an external hard drive.

All of the files already seem to be converted to AVI and I simply drag and drop them onto my hard drive.

This appears to work completely different than the way my old laptop uses a proprietary software to capture raw footage directly from the camera using firewire.

This is why I'm curious if it would actually work going from the Firestore to USB.

Thing is, the company seems to have shut it's doors, so info is very limited.

Don't think that will work. On the Mac it is a simple matter to do this however, there are inexpensive Thunderbolt to Firewire converters. I have the Apple one which IIRC cost around $20 and it works perfectly with my Sony HVR-M15U tape deck. It is not a passive adapter however, there is some circuitry inside and it gets surprisingly hot also! There are also thunderbolt docks with firewire ports.

Have not kept up with things on the PC side, do newer machines use thunderbolt?

I'm a pc guy and don't have a clue how anything Apple works lol

What's on the firestore is a digital file. It doesn't need to be converted to anything, in fact, you should steer clear of programs that claim to import all video and convert it. You don't want a conversion.

The closer you get to the original file, the better. Your old PD170 *does* create digital files, that are laid out linearly on the tape. The best conversion isn't a conversion at all, just a transfer of that file to a hard disk.

I too have had good results on a mac with a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter - it's not actually creating a new file, just giving a modern mac a firewire port.

Firewire is still in use on the PC, too, but not on laptops! You need a firewire card on a desktop PC that has card slots. There isn't a laptop solution the way there is on Mac.

So, your Firestore. That's right, it's a hard drive with firewire input, that lays down your DV files. If it has USB connectivity as well that's great - you don't need to do anything else, just plug it into your laptop via USB and transfer the files (don't convert them).

Do it while you can. When that Firestore or the PD170 stop working, you'll be out of luck. Such is life with 12 and 15 year old technology.

What's on the firestore is a digital file. It doesn't need to be converted to anything, in fact, you should steer clear of programs that claim to import all video and convert it. You don't want a conversion.

The FS4 apparently has several formats to choose from:

RAW DV, AVI TYPE1, AVI TYPE2, CANOPUS AVI, MATROX AVI, QUICKTIME, QUICKTIME 24P and AVI TYPE2 24P

I have no idea which one is best, but I've been using AVI Type 1 cause that's what it was originally set to when I got it.

If I chose Quicktime instead, wouldn't it be converting the captured footage to that format?


So, your Firestore. That's right, it's a hard drive with firewire input, that lays down your DV files. If it has USB connectivity as well that's great - you don't need to do anything else, just plug it into your laptop via USB and transfer the files (don't convert them).

That's the big question as I'm not sure if it's USB compatible or not.

The only cable it came with is a 6-pin to 4-pin Firewire.

I use it on one side to plug into the camera to save the footage, then plug it into the other side and my old mini laptop to transfer the footage.

http://www.codectest.com/productreviews/fs4/fs4-dvr.jpg


It would surely save me a ton of time if it was in fact USB compatible


Do it while you can. When that Firestore or the PD170 stop working, you'll be out of luck. Such is life with 12 and 15 year old technology.

Yeah, my new year's resolution is to burn through a tape a day and get it all on the cloud.

Figure I should be done by the end of Summer lol

The FS4 apparently has several formats to choose from:

RAW DV, AVI TYPE1, AVI TYPE2, CANOPUS AVI, MATROX AVI, QUICKTIME, QUICKTIME 24P and AVI TYPE2 24P

I have no idea which one is best, but I've been using AVI Type 1 cause that's what it was originally set to when I got it.

If I chose Quicktime instead, wouldn't it be converting the captured footage to that format?
These are different wrappers, also known as container formats. You would choose one of the first 3 and see how that works with your editing software. They're all going to be the same quality (same video data). The differences are in how that data is organized.

That's the big question as I'm not sure if it's USB compatible or not.

The only cable it came with is a 6-pin to 4-pin Firewire.
That sure looks like it's firewire only!

It's a bunch of steps with your old laptop. But it sounds like the choke point is using an SD card to transfer between the old and new laptops. USB3 hard drives that are also USB2 compatible aren't very spendy.

My firewire drive (and my JVC cameras) connects to my MacBook with just one cable - the one with the square black connector with the little notch in it (400?) Firewire is just a different protocol, that's all - what comes down it in terms of file format is not really that important - The only thing is speed. USB3 is quick, Firewire nearly as quick and USB2 a bit slower. My external recorder that's on the back of the camera is happy recording in quite a few formats.

Below video might help? As far as I can see you"ll need a firewire hub that connects via usb to your laptop, these hubs have a 6pin connector so you will need a 6pin to 6pin cable as well to go from your firestore to the firewirehub

How To Transfer Video From Focus FS-4 DTE To Your Computer - YouTube

...As far as I can see you"ll need a firewire hub that connects via usb to your laptop, these hubs have a 6pin connector so you will need a 6pin to 6pin cable as well to go from your firestore to the firewirehub...
Perhaps you've seen one and could link to a firewire hub that converts to USB? They don't exist, I think.

There is some misinformation floating around out there on the internet:

*No, simple adapters and cables don't work - FW and USB are quite different protocols.

*No, if you have an external drive with FW and USB it won't convert. Your DV FW camera may physically connect to the drive, but, the drive doesn't have the software running to pull down the FW stream.

I could be mistaken but I found this video just now that shows a firewire to usb hub: (look from 01:40)

https://youtu.be/BthebohwsDk?t=1m41s

Anyways, I've tested the FS4 with my older mini notebook (Sony Viao TX-770P) using Firewire and it worked great, but that notebook is very limited when it comes to editing, so I just transferred the AVI files to my current laptop via SD cards (slow process)

Why don't you just get an external drive, attach it to the old laptop and use it to capture the video directly from the PD-170? After capturing, just move the drive to your new computer. If you are dealing with any amount of footage, you will probably want it on an external drive anyway… wouldn't you?

I may be missing something, but don't see where the FS4 fits into the workflow. You would need to use the tape drive on the camera regardless. Why not just go directly from the camera to the laptop to a hard drive? Seems like the FS4 is only useful if you want to record video directly to it while shooting, as an alternative to using tape.

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding here about FireWire and capturing tapes.

The FireStore captures the video into a file. A computer can do the same thing.

The video exists in a digital format on the tape in the camera. The [computer, FireStore] will capture that linear data into a file using whatever codec and wrapper you choose in real-time (1 minute of footage takes 1 minute to capture.)

The FireStore only has FireWire ports, no USB ports. Short of taking the hard disk out of the FireStore, there's no way you can get the footage out of the FireStore using USB.

The easiest way to accomplish what you want is to capture the footage from your PD170 to an external hard drive using your laptop with FireWire. Then take that external hard drive and plug it into your main editing computer. Unless your FireWire laptop is too slow to capture the video in real time, then completely forget the FireStore.

Thanks for all the info

My old Vaio is way too slow to capture the footage directly from the camera.

It does work, but I end up with dropped frames from time to time (especially on a long clip), which can means having to start all over again (I'm using Vegas Video Pro 12 for all my editing btw)

On the other hand, the Firestore seems to capture the footage flawlessly every time and the files are just there to copy and paste.

RICK, is your new computer a desktop? Or a laptop? Which modern ports does it have available?

I say get an external USB3.0 hard drive.

Capture the footage from the camera to the Firestore as you have been doing with no dropped frames.

Use your old laptop to transfer the captured footage from the Firestore to the new USB external drive.

If you want to spend $20 extra for a USB3.0 PCMCIA Card for your old Sony laptop, that would speed up the process.

Otherwise just set up the slower USB transfer for overnight or when you leave for lunch, etc.

Then connect the new external drive to your better editing computer.

Back in the day when transitioning from FW-only drives to newer USB2.0 and USB3.0 drives, especially when retrieving archival footage to edit on my newer computer, I did this a lot.

RICK, is your new computer a desktop? Or a laptop? Which modern ports does it have available?

It's a Toshiba Qosmio X875-Q7390 Laptop
2 USB-2 ports
2 USB-3 ports
HDMI
Ethernet
Serial
BluRay combo Burner
3D screen

No PCMCIA slot or Firewire port

Hi Noa

I looked up the Pinnacle unit out of curiosity. My guess is that it isn't a hub - it's more of an almost mini computer - there's probably some logic inside to read from FW into a buffer and then write to USB. Somebody could almost certainly buy a Raspberry Pi for $35 (or maybe a Raspberry Zero for $5) and hook up some connectors and write some code to make it sort of work.

Take a look at the reviews on Amazon - mostly 1-star because of crappy quality. Maybe OK for grainy 320 x 240 was one comment.

If you can't get your laptop to work via FireWire PCMIA, for the money, just buy an old white Core2Duo 13" MacBook for $150 that has a FW400 input. Import (copy) directly from the Firestore to an attached USB drive, then move that over to your regular edit laptop.

It's a Toshiba Qosmio X875-Q7390 Laptop
2 USB-2 ports
2 USB-3 ports
HDMI
Ethernet
Serial
BluRay combo Burner
3D screen

No PCMCIA slot or Firewire port

Probably the computer has 5400 RPM hard drives, which has caused me to have dropped frames on my old Toshiba. Jay's recommendations will address that issue.

Mark

I looked up the Pinnacle unit out of curiosity. My guess is that it isn't a hub - it's more of an almost mini computer - there's probably some logic inside to read from FW into a buffer and then write to USB.

It looks like that Pinnacle doesn't sell it anymore, on their website they have the "dazzle" now but that one doesn't have a firewire input, that old pinnacle hub came out in 2003 and is only available as used on ebay.

What's on the firestore is a digital file. It doesn't need to be converted to anything, in fact, you should steer clear of programs that claim to import all video and convert it. You don't want a conversion.

The closer you get to the original file, the better. Your old PD170 *does* create digital files, that are laid out linearly on the tape. The best conversion isn't a conversion at all, just a transfer of that file to a hard disk.



I guess I'm still a bit lost on this....

How would I go about transferring files from my Sony cams directly to my old laptop (with Firewire)?

I've always just used a program (particularly Vegas Video, but here have been others) and each one basically controlled the camera's playback and captured the footage as AVI's

If I just plug in my camera without opening up a program, a webcam app would pop up and I've be staring at myself lol

You're mis-reading one extra step into what Seth was saying. The camera tape does have digital files on it, but really what he is meaning is the closest computer-useable version of this information is what you have captured originally on either the Firestore (with no dropped frames) or on your older Sony laptop (with occasional dropped frames).
That's really the closest you can get to what is on the tape for computer editing, and after a successful capture to a good DV file format, it doesn't need to be converted again, just copied to a new drive that is compatible with your newer editing computer.

When I was doing this, I never had a problem with dropped frames even on old computers. I was always using 7200rpm drives and Scenalyzer Live software.

I never had a Firestore, but like it shows in the video Noa put on, once the files are captured to the Firestore it can be accessed by the computer just like any hard drive.

If you have to use the Firestore to avoid dropped frames, then this will be a two-step process.
Capture from the camera to the Firestore, then connect it via firewire to your old computer and set it to HDD mode.
Also connect a new USB3.0 hard drive to the old computer and simply copy the captured files from the Firestore to the new drive. Then connect the new USB3.0 drive to your new computer.

Captured DV files can be time consuming to transfer if using USB or USB2.0. The DV AVI files I used to use were about 13Gb per hour filesize. So if you add a USB3.0 card to your old computer it would speed up the copying process.

It might even make it possible to capture without dropped frames and not use the Firestore at all.
Connect the camera via firewire to the old computer, use Scenalyzer Live software to control the capture and use a 7200rpm USB3.0 drive connected to a new $20 USB3.0 PCMCIA card in your old Sony laptop. (I have also always used Vegas for editing, but not for capture as Scenalyzer Live always did such a good job.)

If that works successfully, then you're done in one capture step and can edit the captured files using your newer computer without having to copy them.

It seems odd that you are having dropped frames on the Vaio. Did you use that to capture video in th "old days" without problems? Regardless, the problem could be the slow internal hard drive on the old computer. As has been suggested, and external drive may fix that. I agree, you should not need a very powerful computer to capture DV with no dropouts. I used to do it on a Macintosh G3, and that was no speed demon!

I guess the firestore solution would be a work around, but it sounds like a lot of trouble, especially if you have any quantity of footage to capture.

That's really the closest you can get to what is on the tape for computer editing, and after a successful capture to a good DV file format, it doesn't need to be converted again, just copied to a new drive that is compatible with your newer editing computer.

I guess that's the part that really gets me....

The Firestore seems to already have each file captured as AVI's and ready to drag and drop onto my hard drive via Firewire, whereas I would otherwise have to connect the camera to my old laptop and capture using Vegas.

Doesn't look any different than when I pull the files off an SD card from one of my GoPro's, yet I'm not able to do this on my Qosmio because of the lack of Firewire.




It seems odd that you are having dropped frames on the Vaio. Did you use that to capture video in th "old days" without problems?

Back in the day, I used a much faster laptop (Toshiba Satellite) and didn't have any issues with dropped frames.

The Vaio I currently have is the only laptop I have left with Firewire, but it's an ultra portable and just way too slow for editing.

It does fine on smaller clips, but on long captures, it will start dropping frames here and there and I usually just sh!t-can the entire capture after the first dropped frame.

In fact, if I try to do anything else while trying to capture footage (like surfing the net or listening to music), it has a stroke and starts dropping frames left and right.

The Firestore seems to get it done without worry of dropped frames whether I'm pulling footage from a tape or the camera itself (tapeless)

I have an external USB-3 hard drive, so I'll most likely be using that from now on instead of the SD cards