Firewire, IEEE1394, and Sony i.Link

[Dave McElderry]

A long time ago I remember a discussion about whether the Sony i.Link is just another name for Firewire. If I recall, there was some question about whether or not one could substitute a standard Firewire cable on a Sony camcorder instead of using the Sony i.Link specific brand. I'm thinking that they were all the same, but I have a friend who is having trouble capturing from a Sony camcorder with a generic Firewire cable. I just want to rule this out as a possible cause. Comments?

[Chuck Engels]

It is possible that your friend needs a Sony iLink cable which is in reality a Firewire cable.
Not sure what Sony does to make it so some of their camcorders will not work correctly without the Sony cable.
At least that is one possibility.

[Bobby]

I had no trouble hooking my Sony DCR-TRV240 camcorder up with a standard Firewire cable and standard Firewire PC port. I don't think there is any difference.

[jackfalbey]

i.LINK is just Sony's proprietary name for an IEEE1394 connection. There's no technical difference between the two. I suspect your friend has either a bad cable or a bad port on his cam. They have been known to get fried by static discharge if the cable is plugged or unplugged while the device is powered on.

[Dave McElderry]

Hmmm...there seems to be a difference of opinion...

[Bob]

IEEE 1394 is the name of the specification. Firewire (Apple) and i.link (Sony) are brand names for implementations of the 1394 specification. The 1394 specification originally called for 6 pins with 2 used for supplying power to the device. The Sony i.link implementation omits the two power circuits and only has 4 pins instead of 6. It's the small plug that fits in the camcorder socket. It became officially supported by the IEEE 1394a version of the specification. There is no difference between 4-pin i.link and Firewire cables. The pin connections are compliant with the specification.

[Dave McElderry]

That helps a lot Bob. We will move on to other possible reasons for his problems.

[Chuck Engels]

All I know, after years of working these forums, is that sometimes when a Sony Firewire cable is used the problems all go away. Don't know why, but it happens.

[Dave McElderry]

I believe you Chuck. If we get to the point where there's no apparent reason why things shouldn't be working, I'll keep this in the back of my head. The really sad part about all of this is that he bought a $3000 camcorder and the Firewire cable was optional.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

The really sad part about all of this is that he bought a $3000 camcorder and the Firewire cable was optional.

Sony aren't alone in that. I don't know of any camera manufacturer that automatically includes the very cable that you will need most of all.

[Bob]

Cables can be marginal or defective. And, cheap, poorly made cables are more prone to problems than better made quality cables. Especially for longer cables. Do you have access to another cable that you could try to confirm or rule out his cable as the problem?

[Dave McElderry]

Okay, he's got the capture working fine by using WinDV. However, he doesn't want the video split into all the separate files that WinDV gives him. Is there any way to turn off the AVI splitting function, according to timestamps, in WinDV? I hate to have to have him splice everything back together. His video skills, and software, are very limited. I couldn't find any option in WinDV to do that.

[Chuck Engels]

There is a size setting in WinDV on the Config screen, set the max frames to where ever you want it to be.
I have mine set to 108,000 that is a one hour clip.

[Dave McElderry]

Okay, I can have him try that Chuck. There's a line from the WinDV readme.txt file that does have me a bit worried though:

automatic AVI splitting according to the timestamps on DV recordings
every video sequence can be saved into unique file

That makes it sound like he's still going to get separate files every time the timecode is discontinuous.

[Dave McElderry]

I see that the default is 22500, whick comes out to about 12.5 minutes. The video he was capturing was about 8 minutes, and he said that he got 30 separate files. I did notice that right above that Max AVI size setting is a setting which is called discontinuity threshold, in seconds. Its default is 1. I'm thinking that this is the amount of time discontinuity that has to take place before WinDV produces a new file. I'm wondering if this was set to some large number, like 21600 (6 hours), then it just might ignore the timestamp.

Edited to delete 2nd question about file location. I figured it out.