Pyro Firewire thingy

[intomisery]

Hello,
just wondering if anyone has used the Pyro card that allows for your PC to have 3 firewire ports. I was previously going to purchase to Maxtor HDs and a fasttrak66/100
but that seems a bit pricey and the Pyro is much cheaper. Just wondering how it compares.
Also, is there perhaps a Firewire to S-Video/RCA converter so that a normal analog signal can be sent through this device?

thanks!
-Brett

[wkulecz]

Sony makes a DVMC thinggy that converts analog to firewire and vice-versa. Unfortunately it costs only about 25% less than a low end camcorder. Reports are the current MS/TI firewire drivers don't see it unless you also have a camcorder hooked up at the same time (sorta defeats the purpose if you ask me). Hopefully Jeff B. is still around and can give the specifics as he has one.

I don't think you can compare a firewire hard drive to a fasttrack 66/100. It'll surely be better than a USB hard drive, but you'll be in early adopter bugland for sure.

When comparing prices you must remember that you need the firewire card (<$75) and the firewire hard drive (priced like SCSI last time I looked) or the ADS Hard Disk firewire kit for a normal IDE drive. Last time I looked this wasn't that much cheaper than a fasttrack 66. So I don't see any major savings. Given the open ended potential for headaches with this new stuff, I say, try it only if you've a lot more free time than money.

The latest VS and MS updates from Ulead have fixed most of my issues under windows 2000 with the Pyro. Still some rough edges -- like the MS DVcodec sucks -- resulting in poor transitions and re-renders and audio problems remain for some, irrating audio rendering on every file import, etc. It did fix the loss of sound sync and "static noise" on captures past ~8 Minutes and device control on my TR7000 now works enough to be usable, although Video Cature in MSPro6 still seems as flakey as it was in MSPro5.2.

The Pyro is cheap enough to be worth getting your feet wet with DV editing but at present, if you are serious you still need a DV Raptor or better ($500+).

In the mean time, My G200 Marvel, AVI_IO, and MSPro lets me capture, edit and output back to VHS without too much pain while some DV editing dust settles.

If I had more free time to edit on more serious projects, I'd have probably bought a Raptor already, but until I get more free time, I can afford to wait for some other pioneers to take the arrows in the back instead of me.

--wally.

PS I define serious project as one with a hard deadline and a quality that someone is willing to pay for. With the current state of PC based editing, taking on something with a real deadline is simply asking for trouble IMHO.

[CarterTG]

Actually, NTSC DV Raptors have taken a nosedive in price. <A HREF="http://www.videoguys.com/raptor.html">VideoGuys</A> had it selling for $370. With the full-screen pass-through features and overlay, it's probably the best deal in its pricerange. However, if you were looking at the ADS Pyro as a peripheral firewire port, the DV Raptor can't compete there.

Some link found through the <A HREF="http://www.dimensionx.sitehosting.net/">PC NewsCenter</A> within the past three weeks jumped to a review on ADS's firewire HD kit. Aside from complaints about it's size, the transfer speed seemed pretty favorable...beating its native EIDE connection if I recall. Being able to easily swap in a new firewire HD per project (or daisychain) does have its appeal.

But for cheap killer sustained transfer speeds, a FastTrack RAID still sits on top.


------------------
Carter
------
Tyan Tiger 100 rev.F
Dual PentiumIII 650e CuMine Slot1
Dual 128mb PC100 generic
[C:] 10.2g Seagate ATA66 5400rpm
[D:] 10.1g IBM ATA66 7200rpm
Promise FastTrack66 RAID
[E:] Dual 30.7g Maxtor ATA66 7200rpm DM+
[F:] Ricoh MP9060A DVD/CDRW
Dual SVGA 17" screens
Matrox G400 DualHead AGP 32mb
SBLive PCI
NDC 10/100 PCI
Canopus DV Raptor
USB IntelliEye
FourPoint2000
Windows2000 w/SP1
Canon XL1

[wkulecz]

Don't get me wrong, I'm a firewire fan, but I don't see how its possible for an EIDE drive on a firewire adapter kit to "beat its native speed" unless there was something horribly wrong with the benchmark and/or the EIDE configuration. Equal would be the upper limit, which I assume firewire should always attain until the total bandwidth of multiple drives/devices gets too high.

With the price of Raptors dropping, I'd bite today if Canopus gave a firm commitment to windows 2000 and WDM capture drivers. I'm not willing to shell out anything for "legacy" hardware right now. I'm flat out tired of 2/4 GB file limits despite the "goodness" of the "workaround" in the Canopus drivers.

I'm skeptical of the integration of firewire hard drives into the system not causing problems right now. I'd love to be wrong, but firewire is at the 1.0 state in windows and given the problems controlling DV camcorders so far, I'm staying far away for the time being. Firewire drives appear to work fine on the recent Macs, but the price premium is still pretty high.

When the drives have firewire interfaces natively I'll get them without hesitation, but that day may never come given that firewire is "Apple technology" and the current push for "serial ATAPI"

If you get one, let me know how it goes.

--wally.

[CarterTG]

I dunno exactly how the <A HREF="http://sysopt.earthweb.com/reviews/pyro-drive/index.html" TARGET="_TOP">article</A> mustered higher scores with the Pyro either, but then again, I didn't write <A HREF="http://sysopt.earthweb.com/reviews/pyro-drive/index.html" TARGET="_TOP">it</A>. Given the current trends in storage capacity/price/technology, the FireWire consortium had better make their moves fast.

As for Apple's stake in firewire, I thought they only trademarked the term FireWire — not the technology...thus explaining why the rest of the industry opting to freely use the IEEE.1394 moniker.

Wondering if I now need to pay Apple for uttering "FireWire" so many times,
Carter