Feature request: ieee1394 (Firewire) UHCI/OHCI pass-through support

[Russ Magee]

ieee1394 (Firewire) OHCI/UHCI support for Windows guests on Linux hosts would be a great boon to musicians and videographers everywhere. Perhaps a VirtualBox Guest Addition adding a virtual firewire chipset driver?

Many pro audio companies such as Alesis, Mackie, M-Audio etc. have great audio interfaces which sadly have no Linux drivers...

Firewire is the *last* thing keeping me (and others) from running fully virtual Windows installations on Linux. It seems no other solutions (VMWare, etc.) have given Firewire a priority. VirtualBox could really pull ahead of the pack here by being the first!

[brian]

Same issue with the software for my Presonus Inspire. Since the device won't interface through freebob/ffado, it won't interface through jack / wine either. I/O works fine but no way to turn on phantom power or change levels. Firewire would be really wonderful!

[Dude4Linux]

I need this feature for video editing. I want to run Adobe Premiere Elements in Win XP using VirtualBox on Ubuntu. I just upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy and VirtualBox 1.6 hoping that firewire support would be included. Sadly I will have to continue to run dual-boot so I can capture video from my camcorder. Trying to setup so at least I can edit the captured files in VirtualBox. This feature would move VirtualBox to the lead.

[Zoltán]

Hello There! Dude4Linux! Why using windows for capture? Ubuntu Studio works fine with built in apps, just use the sudo command from the command prompt. For video editing, there is a fine app, called Open Movie Editor, it's cool, and pre installed on Ubuntu Studio 8.04. For capture use the Kino. And don't forget to give admin rights to the apps (run terminal, and type sudo kino or sudo openmiveeditor then type your password and everything will work fine). Good Luck! :)

[Zoltán]

Also, a firewire support in VirtualBox will be cool :)

[Rick Jones]

I see the priority of this request has been downgraded to "minor" - that's a shame. I too would very much like to be able to pass firewire through to a Window guest. As with others, it's the last thing preventing me from booting only Linux, and doing the stuff I need Windows for entirely in a VM.

For various reasons, including legacy, the video software available in Linux doesn't do what I need (much as I would wish otherwise).

I suggest the simplest solution would be a total pass-through option, rather than per-device as with USB. I suspect that those who need this feature would be unlikely to want some firewire devices routed to the host and some to the guest. It would at least be a good start :)

I'm using Vbox 2.0.6, but the comments apply equally to OSE.

[Phill Rogers]

I want firewire support to go the other way to most of the above people.

I spent years trying to find reliable, usable and affordable video editing software on Windows and eventually gave up and got a Mac for iMovie. I now have a few friends who also want to do video editing but can't afford a Mac. So I looked again for open source video editors recently and was very impressed to now find 7 contenders. So I've created a Linux Mint vm guest in VirtualBox, hosted on my MacBook and am working my way through testing the editors. So far so good.

Then I realised that without firewire/ieee1394 support in VirtualBox, I'm not going to have a workable solution. I really want to give my friends a video editing suite in a vm as I don't want to have to help them when their host Windows goes wrong.

Surely there's enough solid firewire code out there in Linux and clustering gubbins to make it a fairly easy addition to VirtualBox ?

Oh, and I also dabble with "pro-sumer" audio kit which is often firewire. Firewire support would be a real killer-app / unique-selling-point that would differentiate VirtualBox from all the others. I'd put money into it.

[rfkrocktk]

Please implement 1394 support in VirtualBox, would be so helpful for us!

[phayes]

Please change the priority on this from minor. This is the only issue that is stopping me from using Virtual Box.

Some discussions that show that this is not a minor issue: ​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9637 ​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20461 ​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7642 ​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=84&start=0

I could keep listing, but you get the idea...

Thanks!

[phayes]

P.S I am willing to put a $100 bounty on this feature if any independents out there submit a working patch in the next two months.

[Michael Thayer]

Just a couple of points. First of all, Firewire support is not currently on our roadmap, as a number of people on those forum topics pointed out. (Yes, that could change, but then again it might not.)

Someone asked about latency issues, and yes, there would be additional latency with Firewire in a guest and no, it would probably not be a predictable, constant latency as VirtualBox itself doesn't run as a realtime application on the host.

Someone else mentioned a Firewire-over-ip solution which should be feasible to set up inside VirtualBox - host-guest communication over ip is something we have put a lot of work into optimising, and while it would not be quite as fast as a dedicated solution it would work in a pretty similar way.

And finally I have to wish you luck finding someone who will do this for $100, as virtualising a Firewire controller *and* hooking it up to the host's Firewire stack (on four different host platforms) is not an excercise for a Sunday afternoon, or at least it wouldn't be for me.

[phayes]

Thanks for the response. The firewire over IP is an interesting solution that i'll try to get working. I realize that the $100 is way to low, but it's all I have, and I find that putting your money where your mouth is, even if it's symbolic in nature (only $100), can sometimes go a long way.