Firewire to USB Adapter (No Capture Function) IEEE 1394 4 Pin to USB Converter Cable Male to Male Firewire Cable Compatible with DV Digital Cameras Video Cameras for Viewing on Laptop/Computer (1M)

Good value.

I bought this cable to connect my camcorder to my laptop to tranfer videos. It didn't work so I had wasted my money. A search on Youtube eventually revealed a video that said it wouldn't work. What a pity I had not seen the Youtube video first. Apparently I need an electronic converter device to fit between camcorder and laptop. Perhaps this cable will be needed for that. I may yet find that I haven't wasted my money. Anyway the cable looks good quality and the failure is not the cable's fault but camcorder/laptop compatibility.

After doing some research because the cable didn't work, I found that Firewire to USB cannot possibly exist. THIS IS A SCAM PRODUCT! I have put the reason why it cannot exist just below but I urge you to look it up for yourselves too."On computers, Firewire and USB work quite differently. USB was first introduced in roughly 1995 and was famously showcased by Bill Gates when it crashed a Windows PC at a tech expo. USB has safety and security layers to it that make it a LOT more secure than Firewire. It does increase the latency and slows the bandwidth a bit too. But this isn't an issue in modern USB. Most computers have a PCI bus. This bus can directly address memory and interrupts on the system. Which can me a massive security hole. To prevent this and make USB more hot-pluggable, an OHCI/UHCI layer exists between the USB root hub and the PCI Bus. This means that no USB device can directly access the computers internal memory spaces or the interrupts of the system.Firewire however, can directly access the memory of the system. Not only does Firewire operate on different voltages than USB, but since it can also address memory directly on a PC/MAC it makes it completely incompatible with the USB interface and protocols. This shows that there is no manner of adapter that you can make, that would allow it to work. No adapter you construct would allow the USB root hub to access the PCI bus like Firewire can. You can consider this a limitation of USB."

Over the years, I have probably thrown out many of these cables but after finding our old video camera in the attic, needed one to digitise the video tapes it uses. Connects well and I will no doubt use it for rmonths to come editing the video files. Recommended!!

Thought it would work to transfer from our DV camera to a PC but it doesn’t. But a FireWire PCI card instead. Haven’t used it for anything else so can’t comment on usage.

USED TO LINK MY CAMCORDER TO MY COMPUTER

This is really good quality cable. It’s perfect for people who have Sony mini DV camcorders to connect to their Macs. Yes old stuff but if like me you got one if these si you could play old tapes, then you need one of these.

This is a con trick, which I fell for. Just because you can put a FireWire plug on one end of the cable, and a USB plug on the other doesn’t mean that the devices on each end can communicate - and they can’t. One end speaks FireWire and the other speaks USB. some kind of intermediary protocol translation is required, which these cables bypass. Hence, my PC on the USB side doesn’t recognise my video camera on the FireWire side. Amazon should not allow these cables to be sold.