Imagine if you will... a small editing room at a college. You have 3 XP-Pro computers where students cut video on a program like Vegas. You have one pro Panasonic mini-DV VTR that has firewire/1394 in/out.

The question: Can i-- via firewire-- go out of the VTR into a 3-way firewire router/repeater and thus feed each computer a firewire signal from the one deck?

I'm not trying to do anything funky like simultaneous capture on multiple machines-- i'd just like to have each computer be able to capture off the deck, one at a time, without having to jockey connections around every time.

XP identifies anything that is connected to its host machine, so what happens when it identifies 2 other PC's and a deck connected to it?

As far as I know, you can't split a firewire signal like that. It's not a limitation of firewire, but more of the computers operating system; no OS's support it.

An alternative would be to use a Firewire Switch (http://www.signvideo.com/firewire-1X6-switcher-ieee-1394.htm).

that's what i actually suspected Chris--
thanks for steering me towards the switcher

MRP