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if you're transferring that much data with a card reader, it might be worthwhile to get one that supports FireWire. even a FireWire 400 CompactFlash card reader in PIO mode beats out a USB 2.0 card reader in UDMA mode. but a FireWire 800 CF card reader in UDMA mode absolutely smokes USB 2.0 in UDMA mode.

Synchrotech has performed some FireWire vs. USB 2.0 UDMA CompactFlash benchmarks. this is their conclusion:

While USB 2.0's theoretical 480Mbp/s (60MBp/s) throughput should be sufficient for UDMA 4 CompactFlash, real throughput is significantly less. Top hard drive manufacturers typically cite USB 2.0's best speed at 33MB/s, or about half the speed of UDMA 4 CompactFlash, or 25% of UDMA 6 CompactFlash. There are myriad reasons for USB 2.0's 'real world' speeds including: CPU overhead from its master/slave arrangement, NRZI encoding, and inexpensive chipset implementations. The USB 2.0 UDMA reader used in the benchmarks above uses one of the latest USB chipsets from Genesys Logic. While a new generation of that chipset should soon be available, we don't foresee it providing throughput close to half of that of FireWire.

The above tests demonstrate both FireWire 800 and 400 readers are significantly faster for reading CompactFlash cards by orders of magnitude. When card to computer speed in crucial, always choose a FireWire based CompactFlash reader or a reader with a comparable bandwidth.

so if you don't want the bus interface to be a bottleneck preventing your CompactFlash cards from realizing their full performance, then it might be worthwhile to invest in a slightly more expensive FireWire 800 card reader.

of course, if you have a laptop with an ExpressCard 34/54 slot, then you could go with a CFExpressPro+ PCIe ExpressCard to CompactFlash Memory Card Adapter. though CF rev. 4 itself only supports transfer speeds of up to 133MB (UDMA 6), so any bus speed beyond 1 Gbps would be overkill.

Had you considered Sandisk's (I believe there are other manufacturers with similar devices, but I can't remember which right now) Firewire CF reader?

There is something about the simplicity of the single-slot card reader and nice fast FireWire 800 interface, rather than some lambda-in-one usb monstrosity. My only complaint is it has no daisy-chaining port, the bus certainly has bandwidth to spare.

I have a certain curiosity about this card reader too, no sense in laptop users being left out of the fast card reader party (providing power to the Sandisk FireWire reader is the issue here - Apple's laptops are the only models I can think of with powered FireWire ports). I'd hope most operating systems these days wouldn't spit the dummy when presented with a hot-plug PCI-e device, but you never know.

i got those numbers from Wikipedia, but you're right, USB 2.0 is 480Mbps not 400. that was my mistake.

and as another poster pointed out, the current commercially available FireWire version is IEEE 1394B (FireWire 800), which is only 800Mbps. however, the S1600 and S3200 modes should be available by the end of this year. from Wikipedia:

In December 2007, the 1394 Trade Association announced that products will be available before the end of 2008 using the S1600 and S3200 modes that, for the most part, had already been defined in 1394b. The 1.6 Gbit/s and 3.2 Gbit/s devices will use the same 9-pin connectors as the existing FireWire 800 and will be fully compatible with existing S400 and S800 devices. It will compete with the forthcoming USB 3.0.

USB 3.0 is supposed to reach 4.8 Gbps, but it won't be commercially available until 2009 or 2010. and currently available USB and Firewire implementations still show a huge gap in performance in real-world benchmark tests. with less than half the average throughput of current FireWire interfaces, USB 2.0 really isn't an acceptable substitute for multimedia applications.

TBC == Time Base Correction/Corrector. They can fix sync width and levels, chroma phase, overall video timing, black levels and sometimes even more. Think of them as an all-round cleanup device for video. There is some discussion of this, plus this link, higher up in the thread. There are tons of them out there from el cheapo to thousands. The more switchable features, the better, generally speaking, and the more expensive.

My DAC-100 is by Datavideo. I bought mine here. It is a stand-alone box with composite, SVideo, analog audio, and firewire, with all of these both in, and out. For the digital audio that is on the firewire, there's a button to choose 12-bit or 16-bit encoding/decoding. There's an external power supply, a wall wart. It has LED indicators for analog audio bit depth, digital video, and analog video. It's got externally accessible dip switches that set NTSC/PAL, 0 IRE/7.5 IRE, and manual or auto mode. The DIP switches are generally set once and forget, everything else is automatic - just plug it in and it works. I am not aware that if handles SECAM. It's in a silver plastic case, is heavy enough to not be dragged around by its cables, and comes with no cables - you'll need to buy a firewire cable at the very least to go from it to the Mac, plus the appropriate video cables for your method of use - SVideo or composite (if you're using firewire, eg a digital camcorder, you can plug right into the Mac and you don't need the DV-100 - though it should be noted the DV-100 can make nice SVideo and composite out of DV.) You'll also need standard RCA audio cables for SVideo or composite use. I paid about $200 for it.

RioKarma 20:
20G 2.7 x 3.0 x 0.90 = 7.29 inch^3 5.5oz

ipod specs
10G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.62 = 6.10 inch^3 5.6oz
15G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.62 = 6.10 inch^3 5.6oz
30G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.73 = 7.18 inch^3 6.2oz

So it's pretty comprable size-wise and breaks from the pcmcia 1.8" hard drive mold (0.20" x 2.13" x 3.37") that defines the ipod.

I found a few reviews on Google:

http://www.whatcamcorder.net/frame.html?http://www .whatcamcorder.net/reviews/VideoEditing/Formac/For macStudio.shtml

http://www.ibook-user.com/reviews/review-formac.ht ml

http://www.synchrotech.com/product-1394/analog-dv- converter_01.html

I'm afraid that MPEG-1 is a distinct turnoff with the EyeTV thing. Further USB seems far too slow. Has anyone used the Formac and would like to say how it works? I wished it did Digital Cable as I have that and many channels I'd like to record are on the digital. C'est la vie I guess.

Yeah, use a firewire interface. The Formac Synchrotech is a professional solution. I didn't see a consumer version in my 30 seconds of searching.

:-)