Firewire cable for Canon HV20?

Question

Hi,

I just got this camera (canon hv20) and i am trying to find the right cable to transfer videos to my laptop. Today i bought an ordinary firewire cable (thinking that there was only one of its kind) and realized that it didn't fit into the camera. It did however fit into my Dell XPS 1330, which I believe uses a 4 pin.

After reading reviews on other forums something didn't really make sence to me. They were all saying that the camera uses a 4 pin Firewire as well. Next step was to google the difference between the 4 & 6 pin and i found that the 6 pin was much bigger.

My questions is: Are there maybe different kind of 4 pin Firewire cables? The size of the port is about the same as the cable i bought it's just shaped differently.

Would anyone know what would be the correct term for the correct cable? I am here on vacation and didn't bring any of my manuals and would really like to start editing my movies.

Thanks for any help

Answer 1

There are 3 flavors of Firewire400 (IEEE1394a, i.Link) cables.

4-pin to 4-pin (this is likely the one you want)

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4338435...

4-pin to 6-pin (this is the one most commonly used)

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4338375...

6-pin to 6-pin (this is typically used to daisy-chain external hard drives)

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3778906...

According to

http://www.dell.com/content/products/pro...

This computer does have a IEEE1394 port, but be careful not confuse it with the 2 small USB 4-pin ports...