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General discussion

A Very BASIC Question About Firewire...

Dec 21, 2005 1:58AM PST

Hi everyone. After reading many of the posts regarding transfering video from camcorder to computer, I quickly realized that Firewire is the way to go. However, I am not certain if I have a Firewire card or not. What is the easiest way to determine this? I know this is a dumb question...sorry in advance.

Discussion is locked

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Identify Firewire
Dec 21, 2005 2:35AM PST

Well, if you had a Mac, it tells you by opening up System Profiler where everything is listed, from the details about your HD and CD/DVD drive to every port connection. I'm not sure how to do this on a PC, but you can easily look at the ports on the back of your computer. A USB connection usually has a symbol that looks like a suargo cactus (to me), and a Firewire usually has a symbol that looks like a "Y" with the lower arm of the "Y" being made up of dashed lines. Most PCs don't come equipped to handle multi-media so you simply need to install a proper video card or Firewire card. They're inexpensive. Again, if you have a Mac, it comes standard with Firewire as it is built for multi-media.

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Firewire Card?
Dec 21, 2005 2:44AM PST

I should have mentioned this in the original post, but I have a PC. Of course it's loaded with USB ports. Thanks for the info and quick reply.

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a little question
Dec 26, 2005 12:52PM PST

hello, I am confused about what exactly and how Firewire is intalled onto the computer (pc). Is Firewire a 'card' that needs to be installed? and connected with a Firewire cord to a device such as a camera?

What if I just have the firewire 'cord' and no 'card'? won't work?

thanks.

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FW Card
Dec 27, 2005 1:17AM PST

A Firewire card, with a Firewire connection, does basically the same thing as a USB connection but, due to it's speed, allows for a much larger quantitiy of bandwidth throughput of streaming video into your hard-drive. You really need four things for Firewire to work: A Firewire card properly installed on your computer; a camera with a Firewire port; a Firewire cable to connect your camera to your computer; software that recognizes Firewire, and this is typicall a good video editing program. A few programs typically mentioned for PC are WinDVD, Movie Magic, Vegas. On a Mac, it's iMovie (installed on all Macs) or Final Cut.

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(NT) (NT) Adobe Premiere Element 2.0 will also regonize firewire
Dec 27, 2005 3:08AM PST
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Thanks
Dec 27, 2005 12:37PM PST

Thanks to everyone for providing me with info! Especially this reply, which was very helpful. Thanks a ton!