I use 3 Fire-i Firewire digital cameras (400) chained together with long cables

I used to plug the cameras to a self-powered Belkin Hub firewire 400

Its a necessity with cables longer than 15 feet.

I recently bought a MacBookPro and it has only one firewire port the 800.

My Belkin hub doesn't transmit the signal from my cameras anymore.

Anyboby has found a solution or tested with different hubs ?

What's best ? What do you recommand me to buy.

I use 3 Fire-i Firewire digital cameras (400) chained together with long cables
for my shows.

I used to plug the cameras to a self-powered Belkin Hub firewire 400
Its a necessity with cables longer than 15 feet.

Anyboby has found a solution or tested with different hubs ?
What's best ? What do you recommand me to buy.

3-chained-fire-i-unibrain-hub-solution-for-macbookpro-firewire-800-port

No real solution. You're sure it's not a software problem? I was just coming across your last post regarding this subject in which you were announcing you successfully got 3 fire-i cameras into mac os x.

Talking to the unibrain earlier the day they told me that to their knowledge multiple fire-i cameras are not supported due to QT.

Can you tell me what OSX it was and what drivers did you use?

Thanks so much! I'll keep you updated about my progress.

Talking to the unibrain earlier the day they told me that to their knowledge multiple fire-i cameras are not supported due to QT. 

Can you tell me what OSX it was and what drivers did you use? 

So the problem is not the Belkin Hub and neither the Fire-i cameras (I believe). Either Snow Leopard combined with Max 5.1.3, the 800 firewire port on my new MacBookPro 5,3 or Quicktime 7.6.3 (I deleted Quicktime X and installed 7.6.3)

I tested on my older MacBookPro 3,1 (OSX 10.5.8 with Max 5.1.3, Quicktime 7.6.4) to see if it still works but this time with the fire 800 port (I used before the 400 port as my Hub is 400).

3 Fire-i cameras - 2 of them chained with a 25 feet firewire cable, then

connected to a firewire 400 Hub with a 6 feet cable. The third camera connected via a 20 feet

firewire to the hub. The Hub itself connected to firewire 800 via a Unibrain adaper 400 -800.

I decided to use 2 cameras instead with my project because I don't have time to test further.

3 Fire-i cameras - 2 of them chained with a 25 feet firewire cable, then
connected to a firewire 400 Hub with a 6 feet cable. The third camera connected via a 20 feet
firewire to the hub. The Hub itself connected to firewire 800 via a Unibrain adaper 400 -800.

It works on old MacBookPro 3,1
Doesn't work on MacBookPro 5,3

I decided to use 2 cameras instead with my project because I don't have time to test further.
If you have more infos let me know :-)


i've had many issues using a 800 > 400 cable with the new macbook pro- perhaps some kind of issue w/ power not transmitting sufficiently across the adapted bus? Instead, I've been using an old lacie drive that has both an 800 and 400 port and daisy chaining the drive into the mac, and a camera into the drive.

presumably you could use a powered fw 800 hub directly.

i'm having similar troubles and was wondering if you came to any solution?

in 2012 i’ve been doing a project for a local opera house which involves 8 webcams. I used firewire cams (unibrain fire-i) ,had to make long distances and wanted to daisychain them . One problem i’ve encounterd was the amount of data which goes through one bus. i was using a macpro with 2 fire wire busses which are 4 firewire connectors . on each bus i could use 2 fire wire cams. there are examples on the net where people use 6 firewire cams on one bus . But in my case it didn’t worked . I had to add a pci firewire card to the macpro to get two additional busses.

i did now a few test using a macbook pro (early 2011) and 3 daisy chained unibrain fire-i cameras, each with independent power supply. i can run easily 2 cameras with up to 10m overall cable length. however, using 3 cameras is so far very unstable. even if i stay under 10m overall cable length. unibrain states that it should be possible to use 3 cameras and even go beyond the magic 10 meters using their cables. anyone any experience with that? :)

3 chained Fire-i (unibrain) - HUB solution for MacBookPro (firewire 800 port)