Do those firewire to usb cords work?

Question

I see many sites that have them, but I can't find any information or reviews on them. I want to connect a mini-dv camcorder to my pc without having to install any cards or anything.

If you dont know what i am talking about look at these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-5-Feet-USB-2-0-to-Firewire-IEEE-1394-4-pin-cable_W0QQitemZ140209032378QQihZ004QQcategoryZ88657QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://www.everythingusb.com/news/index/3889.htm

Answer 1

That cable won't do anything, and at worst it'll probably fry your USB port or your camera.  At best, it could be used to charge a firewire battery-operated device from a USB port or vice versa, but it certainly won't let you capture video.  USB is not fast enough to carry firewire data and video capture software will not be able to communicate with a firewire device unless it is connected to a proper firewire port.

Installing a firewire card is not difficult or expensive.  Almost all desktops and even most laptops can have firewire cards added to them easily (PCI for a desktop and PC Card or ExpressCard for a laptop, depending on the model).

Answer 2

I'm very skeptical about the first link - it looks like it's just a cable with a firewire plug at one end and a USB plug at the other.  It can't do anything useful as firewire and USB are completely different technologies.  The second link looks more reasonable, but why spend four times the money on something that will do a second rate job?  It won't allow your capture app to control the camcorder (assuming the app ever manages to detect the camcorder in the first place) and you may have problems with the audio and video getting out of synch.

FWIW, the problem with using USB for transferring video from a Mini-DV camcorder isn't that USB 2 isn't fast enough  - it's actually quicker than firewire.  The real problem is that when you're streaming data from a tape, you can't just stop and start when you feel like it - firewire guarantees that the connection's going to be available all the time, USB doesn't.  USB is managed by the processor - if it decides there's a higher priority task it'll go and do it, leaving your camcorder sending data with nothing controlling the receiving end.