[ This article was first published in the Feb/March, 2008, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]
Will Higgins writes:
I have acquired a 33′ Firewire 800 cable and have done some testing. 33′ is supposed to be the greatest distance before a repeater is required. I have captured entire reels of HD and standard from an HDR-HDC3 and rendered a half-hour long composite of two full HD clips. Additionally, I’ve done heavy load Finder testing – four 70 GB files copying to and from the drive simultaneously.
So far, not a single problem or sign of such.
Question: I am not a big FCP guy. I’m a good troubleshooter of it, but not a user in any sense. That in mind, is the testing that I’ve done sufficient or are there other, more hard drive intensive tests that you would recommend?
Larry replies: I’m not a testing facility either, but my opinion is that if you can get it operating correctly and consistently, then you are probably fine. Thanks for letting me know about the cable limits of FireWire 800 – as a reminder to other readers, this is the TOTAL distance of all cables. The total distance of all cables can not exceed 33 feet.
