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This week Macworld linked to an article at instat.com that pointed out the interface IEEE 1394 (the technology known as FireWire) is headed for a niche status. As and editor in the post production world I always take notice to articles written outside of the film/video world when they mention FireWire. As most everyone knows, the technology is quite prevalent in the post world. I have many FireWire enabled drives from old first generation FireWire 400 interfaces to multiple fast G-RAIDS to a tiny Other World computing portable. The technology is just too fast and too easy to use for it not to be an important interface in my post production world. It’s used for DVCPRO HD editing from the G-RAID, to portability when editing on a laptop on set, to easy transfer of OMF files for audio mixing to the transfer of entire projects from one editor to another. And that’s just in the edit world. FireWire is used when capturing from many DV-CAM, DVCPRO HD decks and transferring files from P2 cards and Firestore drives. It is also used to connect devices like and Avid Mojo or Adreaniline box, an AJA IO HD or the new Motu V3HD. It really feels like FireWire is here to stay.

But maybe not outside of the post and production world… The instat article points to USB’s 100% penetration in the PC market. Since FireWire is an Apple developed technology it’s not surprising that PC makers never fully embraced it. While Macs have come with built-in FireWire since the mid-90s I don’t see many PC’s with FireWire and when I do it is usually the 4-pin variety, the kind that comes on the pro-sumer camcorders. A number of the items the article mentions, printers, scanners, digital televisions, set-top boxes and DVD players are things that for the most part haven’t used FireWire much from day one anyway. I’m sure Apple would have loved FireWire to become a standard as it’s my understanding that they get a small royalty with each device that includes it. At one point, Intel chose USB over FireWire and then the final nail in the FireWire-as-standard coffin may have come when Apple themselves removed FireWire from iPods. But the digital music player would never have become the success it is without USB connectivity.

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An article that was posted on itbusness.net last year painted a bit of a different picture with FireWire. The headline states “FireWire is sneaking into all kinds of devices, from enterprise storage to tools for the GarageBand crowd.” It’s probably safe to say that FireWire will be around for a long while for the professional film and video production and post-production industries. We’ll be more likely to see eSATA replace FireWire for low cost hard drive storage but with FireWire built into so many pieces of hardware that we use on a daily basis, traditional FireWire isn’t going anywhere any time soon.