Firewire network

[Rob100]

I was reading "Computer Video" magazine earlier today and they mentioned about networking two XP/ME boxes together using IEEE1394.

I've since done a quick search on the net and have found some info on it. Faster than 100baseT so it seems.

Has anyone here tried it?

Rob.

[wkulecz]

For me its in the why bother catagory.

100BaseTX is proven, fully debugged, and cheap. With a full-duplex switch (typically built into 4-port $80 Cable/DSL router boxes) you effectively have 200 Mpbs. 1394 at 400 Mps will only be faster for very small networks.

Far more machines have builtin 10/100 ethernet cards than 1394 so with a simple crossover cable one can have an adhoc two machine network. I've yet to see a notebook with builtin 1394 that lacks ethernet -- thus I fail to see the point of 1394 networking. Just because it can be done, doesn't mean its worth doing.

I put USB2 in the same catagory. Leave 1394 for "fast" devices and USB 1.1 for "slow" devices and avoid lots of potential problems.

If 100BaseTX isn't fast enough, Gigabit Ethernet is not out of reach. The switches are the cost problem right now, Gigabit Ethernet cards can be had for ~$50. Prices are dropping on the switches -- maybe next year. I've been told no flavor of windows can saturate Gigabit Ethernet at present, but I'm reporting hearsay here.

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

I second Wallly's comments 100%.

Dr. Mordrid

[Flying dutchman]

Windows ME and XP have the necessary drivers for it. Windows 2000 works too, if you can lay your hands on the drivers. (Sony ships win2000 firewire LAN drivers on their Vaio range of notebooks).

If you wish to capture uncompressed or HuffYuv compressed full-screen video over a network, 100 mbps network cards are definitely too slow. It _might_ just work with IEEE 1394....

[wkulecz]

So far, I've not found a capture program that will accept a mapped network drive as a capture destination.
Not that I've tried them all.

--wally.

[dZeus]

Virtualdub gave no problems here capturing to a mapped network drive.

Though fullres huffyuff compressed captures definately need something faster than 100baseT

[wkulecz]

What version?

I probably don't have the latest, I seem to have dropped off Markus' list.

If capturing to a network drive with HuffYUV is somehow important to you, go for it and tell us how well 1394 networking really works. It doesn't do anything for me. I'll upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet if and when I find a need to do such things.

--wally.

[dZeus]

which version? hmm, something like 1.4c I think.. or older even...

anyway, I don't see how a program can see much of a difference between a mapped drive and a local drive... isn't it pretty much transparent to the program itself?

[wkulecz]

Sorry, I seem to have confused Virtual Dub and AVI_IO.
Virtual Dub never seemed to work very well for me.

If all a program does is a C library "file open" or equivalent, then mapped drive is indeed indistingushable from a local drive.

But when you start doing the SDK "tricks" often needed for video, its extra work to support networked drives and not all functions will work across the network.

I think I tried MSP6 video capture and Sonic Foundry Vegas video 2.0 capture tool on my network just for grins a good while back. I recall both put up an error message, I never persued it.

I often import a file into an MSP project from a networked drive, other than some latency issues it seems to work OK. I've never tried timeline export using files on networked drives -- its hard enough to get glitch free export from local drives.

--wally.

[Flying dutchman]

Many capture programs DO check if the drive is a local drive or not, because they want to disable write-behind caching on the capture file. WB caching can cause massive frame drops when capturing video.

[droopy]

Well, here's some practical information on firewire networking using a program called firenet.

First though you gotta know that you can only gett he full potential on it when using windows 2000 or higher. windows98se according to unibrain, the maker of firenet, has a build in limit which makes it not even able to use the full potential of fast ethernet.

I use a dual PIII-700 with w2k + Athlon XP2000 with w2k. On the Ahtlon I also tried win98se to see the difference.

I only use this combination to transfer captures from one machine to the other. Sometime for space reasons, other for wanting to use the PC with capture card for capturing while encoding an older capture.

I use normal OHCI compatible firewire cards and also can use the firewire port of an Audigy player card in the Ahtlon XP2000. This though uses a DSP which limits its possible speed.

I found some strange differences in speed depending upon which way, from which PC I'm transferring the data and if I'm uploading or downloading. This is something I'm still looking into as I only have this setup for about 2 weeks now.

win98se to w2k = +/-5.8Mbyte/sec (uploading from 98SE)
win98se to w2k = +/-16Mbyte/sec (downloading from w2k)
w2k to win98se = +/- 50kbyte/sec (uploading from w2k)
w2k to win98se = +/- 5.6Mbyte/sec (downloading from 98se)
w2k Ahtlon to w2k dual PIII = +/-25Mbyte/sec (up / download)
w2k dual PIII to w2k Athlon = +/- 25Mbytes/sec (up / download)

As you can see, with win98se, the fastest I got was 16Mbytes/sec when downloading on the PIII w2k machine. With both machines on w2k I got an amazing average of about 25Mbytes/sec which makes it worth, for me at least, to transfer gigabytes of data from one machine to the other machine.

So make up your mind if it's usefull for you and try. This is just for information though and are VERY rough average values from first trials on my part.

Regards, Leon

[Rob100]

Thanks for the reply Leon. That certainly sounds interesting.

On another note - did you ever sort your AviSynth/VDub/TMPEG problem out?

Rob.

[KuroNeko]

very interesting!

This sounds ideal to move those large capture files of 50+ GB to other PCs for rendering.

I'll try and find that company's webpage, but could you tell me if this allows a full network, i.e. several POCs hooked together? Is there something like a firewire hub or switch that works with this networking stuff? Or is firewire networking only a one-to-one connection?

Neko

[droopy]

@Rob100

Hi Rob. To me it was a very interesting solution. I discovered it only because there was a free version which came with the Audigy player card. Which, just for your information, works great and without ANY problems in a MSI K7T Pro2 RU, Ahtlon XP2000, 2nd FW100 firewire card and both 98se or w2k.

I solved the problem with Avisynth the hard way. The PC now has 1.25Gb of memory (6 years ago this was the size of a reasonable HD ;-)). When using Avisynth it uses an average of about 1.08Gb of memory. But it works though, which is the most important. Encoding of 44 minutes 704*368 takes on that machine about 3:12 hours. On the Ahtlon the same in a little less then 2 hours.

@KuroNeko

http://www.unibrain.com/products/ieee-1394/firenet.htm

It allows for a full network. You can mimic basically 2 topology's, being star or daisy chain. Multiple firewire cards in 1 PC is possible, but with w2k server ONLY. You have to be carefull though to never make a circle of PC's connected to each other. This would basically mean a short circuit. Additionally you must NEVER connect the PC before / during installation of firenet or while uninstalling firenet.

You can use any protocol you like. The high speeds though can only be reached using a protocol like TCP/IP. If you use a software router on one of the PC's you can route through to e.g. a fast ethernet network. Basically firenet acts like a normal network and on your desktop you also go to network neightbourhood to find the other PC's connected. File sharing is done through the filesharing option, or if you have a dedicated server that way.

The best part here is. If you use your card to transfer files, at the same time you can use it to capture from a DV camera. So you don't loose that ability. I must say though. If you use them at the same time, transfer speed will suffer. With at the same time I mean while you are up/downloading data to a networked PC also use that same firewire card to capture from a DV camera.

There are repeaters for firewire to increase cable lengths. I have not YET heard of hubs though.

Regards, Leon

[Flying dutchman]

I myself use hard disk caddies to transfer my captures to a second PC for rendering. They cost only $10 or so. ONly disadvantage is that you're limited to UDMA-33.

How about firewire <-> ATAPI converter boxes? they alledgedly offer full plug&play.