Why USB not recommend for Mac OS X?

[filmguy123]

Looking at the HVX, it says to use USB 2.0 under Windows, and 1349 under MAC OS X.

My question is... why? I use USB 2.0 external HDDs all the time in OS X without issue. What's the difference?

Recently, I've been having some firewire problems on my Mac... so I used the HVX-200 is OS X using USB 2.0 transfer. I pulled a bunch of files off the P2 card using FCP6, and had no issues (at least not that I have noticed)...


So is there a problem using USB 2.0? Why does it say not to?

[David Saraceno]

Sometimes the connection doesn't work reliably. USB seems to be implemented differently or awkwardly on a Mac.

But it doesn't present any problems with the transfer.

Make certain the card is write protected before mounting it.

[Barry_Green]

The manual says that USB Device Mode is "not guaranteed" under Mac OS. And it says that 1394 Device Mode is "not guaranteed" under Windows.

Note, they're not saying that it won't work, they're saying that they don't guarantee that it will work.

As to why it's not guaranteed, we don't know, nobody (AFAIK) has ever spelled it out for us.

[Mark Smith]

Hmmm. I use a P2 gear all the time with my macs in USB device mode. Its a chevy commercial "like a rock". No issues ever, decent transfer rates and all the advantages of USB with that device USB host mode- I can write to a drive without a computer in the loop, or USB device mode, can copy to multiple back up drives via HD log . Of course I could do the HD Log route over firewire as well but there are some advantages to staying in the USB realm.

[filmguy123]

Hmm, interesting. Yeah I haven't encountered any issues.

I don't have any miniDV tapes to try this with at the moment, but Mark (or anyone) - do you know if you can live transfer miniDV footage, being played back from the tape player, through USB? (capturing tape in realtime through Final Cuts normal logging/capturing mode?)

[ProfessorU]

USB was designed by Intel and ported to the Mac platform, Firewire was designed by Apple and ported to the PC platform. They're the cheapest to troubleshoot on their native machines.

There is no standard for DV over USB. The DV over IEEE1394 standard is pretty robust, that's why you'll even see it on set-top DVD recorders and other places.