No build is safe anymore!

[conrad gaunt]

I don't know if anyone else has encountered this but a new bug I experienced recently with Build 17 was that if you jump in for the 1:1 zoom/focus check and then come out of zoom mode there was what I termed a "black screen of death" (no picture, nothing, just permanently frozen black screen).

I don't know if this is related to what the manual describes thus:
"When shutter is in synced mode EVF display may blank for up to 3 seconds when exiting Open Gate mode; after exiting Magnify mode when in 4K resolution; after changing between certain Varispeed frame rates".

The problem I encountered, however, existed on all monitors and it seemed to be permanently frozen on a black screen until you hit record which seemed to jerk it out of its frozen state.

I think we were filming with various Varipseed frame rates and resolution settings (mostly 4K 16:9 at 30fps & 3K 16:9 at 50fps, plus a little 2K 16:9 100fps, Redcode 28 onto a RedRam I think). We had open gate unchecked, create proxies unchecked, audio unchecked, I think shutter was "fixed" (not too sure). Personally I've never encountered this particular bug before and I kind of hoped bugs would be disappearing steadily rather than new ones appearing!! :err:

Needless to say we didn't have time to write a log file - most of these problems seem to occur at the busiest times on set when time is at a premium and the camera's being pushed to its limits in terms of frame rates, recording times, settings changes, temperature etc. Anyone else encountered the "black screen of death"?

I think I saw that error during my limited time testing b17, not sure it was using vari-speed though, although there was a slow-mo shot on that last b17 job, so could be wrong

[conrad gaunt]

In hindsight, the thread title does seem a little alarmist, especially to those without problems. Does anyone know how to modify or append thread titles, or know if its possibe?

[Ken Martini]

I got a bad battery pin replacement when I upgraded the sound board. I noticed that the one battery I was having trouble with had some oxidation (no longer shiny) in the female pins. This made me conclude that the rubbing action that keeps the pins clean was not happening. I fixed it by expanding the male pins (the 2 outer ones) with a small tapered pick. This made the pins fit more snugly. If pins do not fit snugly the result is arcing or loss of the wiping action that cleans the pins. Widen it too much, and it won't slide in anymore. A little at a time is prudent.

I will probably be getting into other repairs as time goes on. I may be changing the HD's in one of my drive units that Red want to charge me $350. to do. Hitachi drives sell for about $50. each. I will save $250. If I can pull that off.

[Hans von Sonntag]

If we are already in story telling:

I got my RedOne over a year now and had various glitches that I never had with my Arri SR or 20 years ago with my Betacams Ikegami HLV-55:

1. PL-mount lost backfocus when the camera was switched on for 1 hour or more in a moderate warm environment. This was a serious issue. It took a month or so to solve it: The collar of the mount was not thight enough by factory, tightening the screws solved the problem.

2. Boothangs. Zillions of them. The new Build are much better in this regard.

3. EVF-banding. Still have it. It goes away when the EVF warms up. Comes back when maginfying is pressed. Even in 15 degree Celsius banding happens all the time. Annoying.

4. Death. One morning we wanted to switch on the Red for sound testing purposes and the camera refused to boot. We had to send it back to Red to fix this.

5. Minor things: Redhandles are useless, IMO. Red's bottomplate is not industry standard, the LCD's plug is wearing out too fast, Red's proposed solution to hold the EFV are a joke, the whole sound implementation is far from ideal, the COG is too high for handheld operation, etc...

6. I had only a very few codec errors. Because I'm using Red's 8GB cards I can shoot only 4K 2:1 Redcode28 - this might be a reason.

Custom is a HUGE obstacle. We (Europeans) need the British repair centre badly, the sooner the better - the next issue will come.

BUT: Red's customer service is second to none.

Pictures are great, DR could be better, same with sensitivity.

Postproduction workflows are not yet sorted out for everyone. Yesterday we had a SI2K here. Imagewise it's a great litte camera but tethered to a laptop that one carries in a bagpack. The positive surprise was the fact that you can drop the .avi files into FCP and start editing. The only thing you need is the free CineForm QT plugin. R3Ds should be wrapped in a QT/AVI container similarily.


I never regret my purchase, though. My main investment by far has been lenses. The 18.500k for the body are the smallest part actually and already gained full return of investment. Red's advertised upgrade path is very client friendly and will make me to stick with them.
Ronx is right when he says that the RedOne is a prove of concept but not a fully developed product. For a serious rental business one needs a least two bodies and many third party acessories.

Hans

[Ben Holmes]

Pictures are great, DR could be better, same with sensitivity.

Postproduction workflows are not yet sorted out for everyone. Yesterday we had a SI2K here. Imagewise it's a great litte camera but tethered to a laptop that one carries in a bagpack. The positive surprise was the fact that you can drop the .avi files into FCP and start editing. The only thing you need is the free CineForm QT plugin. R3Ds should be wrapped in a QT/AVI container similarily.


I never regret my purchase, though. My main investment by far has been lenses. The 18.500k for the body are the smallest part actually and already gained full return of investment. Red's advertised upgrade path is very client friendly and will make me to stick with them.
Ronx is right when he says that the RedOne is a prove of concept but not a fully developed product. For a serious rental business one needs a least two bodies and many third party acessories.

Hans

That seems like a fair and reasonable summation of the RED experience to me. As someone involved from the start, I'd like RED to stop talking about what's coming next, and deliver a stable, well thought out camera, with a rock-solid workflow.

Why are we even still talking about Rubber Monkey, Clipfinder, and Codec errors at this stage?

[conrad gaunt]

If we are already in story telling:

I got my RedOne over a year now and had various glitches that I never had with my Arri SR or 20 years ago with my Betacams Ikegami HLV-55:

1. PL-mount lost backfocus when the camera was switched on for 1 hour or more in a moderate warm environment. This was a serious issue. It took a month or so to solve it: The collar of the mount was not thight enough by factory, tightening the screws solved the problem.

2. Boothangs. Zillions of them. The new Build are much better in this regard.

3. EVF-banding. Still have it. It goes away when the EVF warms up. Comes back when maginfying is pressed. Even in 15 degree Celsius banding happens all the time. Annoying.

4. Death. One morning we wanted to switch on the Red for sound testing purposes and the camera refused to boot. We had to send it back to Red to fix this.

5. Minor things: Redhandles are useless, IMO. Red's bottomplate is not industry standard, the LCD's plug is wearing out too fast, Red's proposed solution to hold the EFV are a joke, the whole sound implementation is far from ideal, the COG is too high for handheld operation, etc...

6. I had only a very few codec errors. Because I'm using Red's 8GB cards I can shoot only 4K 2:1 Redcode28 - this might be a reason.

Custom is a HUGE obstacle. We (Europeans) need the British repair centre badly, the sooner the better - the next issue will come.

BUT: Red's customer service is second to none.

Pictures are great, DR could be better, same with sensitivity.

Postproduction workflows are not yet sorted out for everyone. Yesterday we had a SI2K here. Imagewise it's a great litte camera but tethered to a laptop that one carries in a bagpack. The positive surprise was the fact that you can drop the .avi files into FCP and start editing. The only thing you need is the free CineForm QT plugin. R3Ds should be wrapped in a QT/AVI container similarily.


I never regret my purchase, though. My main investment by far has been lenses. The 18.500k for the body are the smallest part actually and already gained full return of investment. Red's advertised upgrade path is very client friendly and will make me to stick with them.
Ronx is right when he says that the RedOne is a prove of concept but not a fully developed product. For a serious rental business one needs a least two bodies and many third party acessories.

Hans

I agree. I only operate one body, and two of the cameramen I work with won't use the camera with some of their clients as they don't feel that they will tolerate the system hangs.

Got a job, possibly?, at the end of the week, and half a day on Monday. Then I can send it back.

Yetserday we muddled through, rebooting every few takes to overcome the system hangs. grr..

[Chris Parker]

wow. i am feeling lucky i guess. i have been on close to 100 shoot days with well over 100 DIFFERENT RED Cameras from different places, and have encountered issues......but none that were showstoppers.

i do agree that the SOLE focus of RED's next build (whether that be 18 or 19) should be stability, and NOT new features. We don't need new features right now. The camera is feature packed. What we need is stability WAY more than anything.

For me, Build 16 was the most stable by far. I have had more problems with Build 17 than ever before. And also with the new 16GB cards.

I am hoping that RED will turn their immediate focus on stability in their next firmware updates.

But what I wholeheartedly don't agree with is that RED is not ready for the big time. As I type this, I am sitting on yet another HIGH END shoot for network TV done on RED. It has it's flaws, but so does every system.

I truly feel bad for those of you who have buggy cameras......

[AntonyCASAFilms]

It would probably be invaluable for Red to receive log files of these errors but their big problem is that most people will encounter codec faults when the camera is being pushed to its limit and time is at a premium - these tend to be the situations when the camera faults but you simply don't have time to write a log file so Red are unlikely to get to the route of the problems [I'd love them to prove me wrong].

I have read through the manual several times. But I can't see mention of how to write a log file.

How do you do it? Does it write the log to the CF card or the SD card?

[Cail Young]

I have read through the manual several times. But I can't see mention of how to write a log file.

How do you do it? Does it write the log to the CF card or the SD card?

Page 42:

Media Menu
This menu provides various media management functions including digital media formatting.

Write Log: select to write camera’s .LOG file to CF card or RED-DRIVE magazine. The .LOG
file is a diagnostic tool that can assist RED with camera troubleshooting. After capture, upload
the .LOG file to the RED customer service team contactable at www.red.com/support

[Stuart English]

Hint. Download the RED ONE Operations Guide - which is a .pdf file..

Assuming that you are reading this document using Adobe Reader -

Type...."log file"....into the search window. Then press RETURN key

Reader will search the document and find all references to that search.