Firewire network

[Ed Smith]

I have recently bought myself a dedicated Editing machine and so now what was my editing/ desktop machine I have now converted into Desktop and possible video server.

The question is this I know that you can use firewire to transfer data from one PC to the other. But is it just as simple to connect the cable and XP will do the rest?

Desktop has Pinnacle studioDV capture card and the edit station has Pinnacle DV500 DVD capture card. Can I connect both PCs though this?

Any advice will be helpful

All the best,

Ed Smith

[Mike Rinkunas]

Ed,

I do some consulting with regards to PC networks, and to-date i haven't seen any firewire based networks.

in theory such a set-up is possible when you think of fire-wire based harddrives, CD/burners, mp3 players, in addition to video capture cards. However all of those products use specialized programs to access the fire-wire port, so i'm not sure what it would take to create a peer-to-peer connection using that port.

If you're trying to set up a real network, you would be best off using a traditional approach (ethernet cards, router/hub/switch, etc). this way you would have the protection & and configuration options of a real network.

So my recommendation would be to try to hit up either microshaft's (no mistake here) website to see if XP can be configured allow this, or try to surf around some of the computer techie versions of DVinfo.net on the web.

let me know what you come up with!
~Mike

[Rhett Allen]

I would try to set yourself up a nice little gigabit network. It is entirely possible to do what you want over firewire (it is called IP over FireWire) but it is much more complicated on the PC side than the Mac side. There are a couple of buildings near me that have HUGE Firewire Networks and they use them for extensive video data (they are broadcast video network offices) but they are also extremely complex. NO Windows XP won't do it for you and if done improperly you could fry your Firewire port at the very least and probably fry more than that.

[Adrian Douglas]

Ed,

Unfortunately the DV500 dosen't behave like a generic IEEE1394 card bus. The firewire in/out is specifically for the card only and is not compatable with networking protocals.

That being said, throwing in a generic IEEE1394 card as well as the DV500 probably wont work either as the DV500 dosen't play well with others.

The gigabit idea is a good one. The price of the cards is coming down and would probably work with the DV500.

[Ed Smith]

Thankyou very much for the replies.

Will, I decided to plug them both together and see what would happen. Will here goes:

1.Before this I checked whether there were any drivers installed on both machines refering to IEEE1394 network connection, and there was. It was under Network adapters. I don't know whether this was installed because both computers have a 100MB ethernet card in them aswell or because XP does it automatically.

2. Since I use the PAL connection on the DV500 capture board to capture I decided to plug it into the NTSC socket. I then connected it to the DVstudio card.

3. I waited.

4. To my amazement the computer told me I had a 400MPS network connection, but they could not see each other.

5. Shared the harddrives and I was able to see what was on one computer with the other and visa-versa.

6. I then copied a file from the Editing machine to Desktop machine and it transfered across beautifully.

As yet I have not tried to cature anything though the PAL firewire port on the Editing machine and sending it straight to the Desktop PC.

I think I'll send an e-mail to the guys at Pinnacle to see whether it is possible and able to do such a task.

Thanks for the in-put, I'll keep you updated on my findings,

Thanks,

Ed Smith

[Rob Lohman]

This sounds very interesting (although I'm still fine with my 100mb
network)... I don't have XP machines with firewire though.....