Vantec2+1 FireWire 800/400 PCIe Combo Host Card (UGT-FW210)

I finally decided to copy the family videos to removable hard drives so that my kids will each have copies of all the Xmas/Easter/graduations/vacations/etc., videos. This began as a horrifying process. Do you know how expensive it is to send your movies off to be transferred? It can be $30 for one 60 minute video. Since I had 50 or 60, 60 minute videos, paying some company to do it was not an option. So now you decide to do it yourself, great. Do you have a camcorder or MiniDV deck to play the tapes in, I hope so because these cameras have not been made for awhile and if you don't have your original camera or it doesn't work, you will have to go online and buy a used one from a stranger that may work or not. Luckily, i still had my DV camcorder in the attic and all the wires. I also have a high 8 camcorder but that was from before the kids were born so I am not that interested on what could be on those tapes for now. I ordered a new DV head cleaner tape for the camcorder and this Vantec Firewire host card and a Firewire cable to hook the camcorder to the host card. Luckily I barely had room on my motherboard to squeeze in the Vantec card, otherwise I had also purchased a PCIe adapter/extension cable and would have had to use that. So far, so good. I believe the firewire driver software was already on my system, otherwise its a simple download after locating one online and they're probably available from Vantec I would guess. Plug the firewire cable into the back of the Vantec card and the cables other end into your camcorder output port. Now you need some transfer software. One nice thing is that the miniDV camcorder recorded your movies in digital so you don't need to convert them (conversion of anything always comes with some quality loss), just transfer the data to your computer via the Vantec card. You'll need to download a capture program to your PC that controls the transfer of the data from the camcorder, over the firewire, thru the Vantec card and into the capture program. Here's a little hiccup in the procedure. Since miniDV camcorders have been out of circulation for awhile, you will not find much in the way of Firewire capture programs around or much in the way of info either. I found a couple of online videos explaining the process and they mentioned a couple of programs. As far as i can tell, these programs are small programs that were created by individuals, not big known companies and they may not have been updated in years. There is very little info on these programs and it was hit or miss how I got them to work. I actually had quite a bit of frustration trying to transfer my movies into a usable movie file. The first program i downloaded and used, had problems with audio. So after I transferred about 10 movies and just happened to play part of one i transferred, I noticed that my voice sounded like Daffy Duck. My voice was very high pitched and cartoonish sounding while most of the other audio was fine. For some reason, the voice recorded close to the camera (from the camera operator) was modified, while the voices of people away from the camcorder mic, were fine. I searched the internet quite a bit and found some other users complaining of similar audio issues but not much in the way of help. I think i narrowed it down to how audio and video are recorded. There are different rates at which audio and video are recorded, say 30 fps versus 60 fps and somethings are recorded at a constant bit rate while other things are recorded at a variable bit rate. So I believe this was my problem. I found another transfer program and it seemed to fix my audio issues, but this program broke all my movies into multiple files. I believe this program looked for pauses on the tape and would start a new file each time it detected a recording pause. Well when a 60 minute video of Xmas is broken into 25 files, I was not happy. Getting another program to merge all the files into one movie was not pleasant and added that much more time. I had to play around a bunch before i figured out a setting that would make the transfer program ignore pauses and just transfer my movie as one file. So I kinda went off topic, but if this helps just one person skip some of the problems involved, that would be great. Wish i had something like that before i got started.Anyways, the Vantec card worked perfectly. Just remember you will need to purchase a firewire cable, one end connects to the Vantec card and will be a 800 port 9 pin or 400 port 6 pin. The Vantec end of the cable can be either, but 800 should cover anything. The other end of the cable needs to match the connector on your camcorder which will be a DV in/out connector. On my Sony MiniDV camcorder there is a Firewire 4 pin connector so that end of my cable needed to be a 4 pin connector. If you don't have info with your camera, do a search for your camcorder and find and download a user manual (my manual was a pdf file that manufacturer had hand copied/scanned to a pdf file, it sucked for trying to read it). You can also search online for firewire connectors or firewire 800 versus 400 and you will eventually find pics of the different connectors. If your camcorder has a USB output or a round pin audio/video output, or a S Video out, don't use those unless there is no firewire output. These other outputs will degrade your movie as in the case of the audio/video output is only for outputting pics, not videos. If you bought this Vantec card, i am guessing that you have firewire so use it and ignore all other camcorder options. I should make my own video on this whole process as what i found online was only partially helpful and as usual, left too many obvious questions unanswered. Good luck.

I'm using this Vantec 2+1 FireWire 800/400 PCIe Card UGT-FW210 to connect a UniversalAudio UAD2 Firewire audio interface to my HP Z640 Intel 8-core CPU Desktop computer. This setup is used for running Avid Pro Tools. The Vantec has the good Texas Instruments chip so firewire connectivity was plug & play. Performance is as expected. I'm a happy happy camper. YMMV

WOW! I ordered this from Amazon.com where they dispatched it on the 4th of Nov (UK Time) from their "seller facility" which I believe is in Kentucky to Austin, TX to Cincinnati, OH to East Midlands, GB to Leeds, GB to Barnsley, GB Where I received it today at 3:13 PM on the 6th of Nov (UK Time) - 2 Days!!!Now about the product:This Firewire card was purchased because the on-board FireWire port on my ageing Asus Rampage 3 Motherboard with the VIA chipset was totally useless and did not function.I did the simple install to a vacant PCIe slot and switched my system back on (Note: Vantec did include a SATA to Molex power adaptor in the box.I am using a Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit based system and this fantastic piece of hardware by Vantec was detected immediately and the drivers for the Texas Instruments chipset were installed automatically by Windows. I have tested a 17 year old Canon Mini DV Camcorder with this Vantec card and it is working flawlessly at capturing my very old videos from my very old Mini DV Tapes.The quality of this card is very high and I am very pleased to have chosen this FireWire card above all others I considered and believe me, I did my research. I could not find this card available for purchase in the UK so I opted to try my luck with Amazon.com who have totally amazed my with the speed and service provided.I highly recommend this product to anyone needing a high quality FireWire card and I also recommend Amazon.com as the place to purchase it from.

The Vantec Firewire PCIe card was trivial to install in a Mac Pro, and works well with peripherals (scanner, external hard drive, laptop in target mode). In older peripherals, Firewire 400 can have faster sustained rates than USB 2.0 even though USB 2.0 is theoretically faster.The only problem with the Vantec card is that the ports are physically too close together. This prevents using some Firewire 400 to 800 adapters in the adjacent Firewire 800 ports or using Firewire 800 cables that have a connector shaped to improve grip. Now I have to buy a different adapter or a new cable. There is plenty of room on the slot bracket and the board to have designed a wider port spacing.

Worked perfectly on a home built AMD based workstation with Windows 10, allowing transfer of videos from Casio Mini-DV camcorder.