Audio sync slip on firmware 3.2.16

[Scott Brown]

That's not foolproof either.. though I did it for many years as well.
Lately, I find that it is a much better practice, and a financial profit center to insist on the camera being audio backup, and a separate recording being done on a standalone recorder.

Also, why are people accepting one man band bookings on anything with a pro camera? You are cheapening your results, and making yourself work harder.
I mean, I can understand shooting an establishing shot or 2 by yourself, but better results come from having support in light, sound, and data management.. not to say of freeing you to manage client relations.

Millions of man years of film, tv, and video produciton in the professional arena might not be wrong....

Does sound recorded separately sound better? The answer is yes. It sounds better because the audio recording capability on Epic/Scarlet is simply not as good as it should be.

We are not cutting corners, we use a dedicated sound recordist BUT having to sync up sep sound is a pain, takes time and ultimately that costs us money. Just because the film industry has always done it this way, does not mean that this is the way we should be doing things now.

Compromises were made when designing Epic and Scarlet and the audio side has suffered. Feedback like this is important for RED and will allow them to make better products - Jim's quest is to make the best camera in the world, the pictures are nearly there, the audio however needs work.

Scott

[Robert Hart]

It is not my intention to be an apologist for RED. The kingpin is big enough and strong enough to look after himself and the enterprise. Besides, I am also one of those sinful people who still drive the SI2K and like it, albeit perhaps a little envious of redware owners.

However, there has probably been reached the point where the consequences of current issues are beyond self-evident to the enterprise that there needs to be no more reminding. The last thing anyone wants right now is for the RED people to become overly agitated in crisis mode and start scuttling around squandering resources putting out small spotfires all over. You will want the fix to be solid, not a desperate workaround patch. It is probably prudent to let them get on with doing it properly.

It might be educational to know the current numbers of cameras happily munching their data without vexing the operators as a percentage proportion to the ones which are sending their owners into meltdown.

It was no fun for JVC when they got ambushed by their split-screen problem in the early GY-HD100. They too were then pushing the envelope of affordable tech innovation. It was no fun for the owner-operators either but the company came through in the end. I expect RED will do the same, given time.

In the meantime, it might be helpful for a thread to be started listing existing proven reliable hardware configurations, with what third party accessories the proven hardware lives with and proven software versions. In this cruel commercial world, there may be entities which in order to remain competitive will want to keep their successful methods in house.

Finally in relation to sound, I am also an advocate for a separate sound recording system with perhaps a feed to the camera-recorder from it. When a lot of money and effort is tied up in production value-adding, which people aspire to with this camera system, it is simple commonsense to protect that investment with redundent systems where it is possible. Anything else is unthoroughness and expediency except where single system incamera audio is an unavoidable must have as in documentary of highly agile camerawork. There are other more appropriate camera systems for that task.

[Max M.]

When i buy a professional camera with audio input there is NO reason to assume this would not work sometimes, and i actually shouldn't trust it. Like buying a car, and accepting that sometimes it will not steer. Some things should just work...always, plain simple. I hate to say to my clients that this great camera can't record sound reliable 100% of the time, and then we have to sync up in post, and that gives producers another reason choose for a c300, f3 or alexa...This is one of those things that is really bad to people's perception of red...

[scott william]

This is why we need audio play back in camera asap. Some of us are recording audio in camera and we really need this...

[Scott Auerbach]

UPDATE:
The issue is with the native R3Ds, not due to any transcode. We have the same problem reading directly from the REDMAGs. Every clip starts with audio trailing by 82 frames, and every 14 seconds, it slips another 82 frames out of sync. By the end of a long take, we're 10 or 20 seconds out of sync. Needless to say, the end of those clips is lost.

I'm not going to play pile-on here... I was interested in whether this was a known issue, not whether I should have dual-system recording on set. Often I do... in this case, as I said, it was a last-minute replacement. That said, I think it's fairly inexcusable. I've been doing this for 25 years, have shot with an enormous range of cameras, and have never had any malfunction significant enough to trash an entire shoot without warning.

We are now looking to do ADR... as a few people pointed out, it's going to be cheaper than a complete reshoot. It'll still cost more than my day rate, but at least I won't lose the client forever. But guaranteed they'll never let me shoot Epic again, which is a shame.

[John Fairstein]

Same issue on my EPIC-X for Build 3.2.8 while putting on an EPIC demo for a regional film festival in June. Several weeks ago RED Support suggested that I update to 3.2.13. But since I see it is occurring in the release build 3.2.16, I'll just park the EPIC until this issue is completely resolved and audio playback is enabled. For most of my work I shoot solo, so double system sound is not really an option.