Why is the Scarlet so buggy?

[William Robinette]

Never had a problem with mine either. Bullet proof.

 

[paul schefz]

i had an issue right after i got mine and it was replaced but all in all it is surprisingly bullet proof (compared to anything electronic and other stories that i had heard before buying...)...stay up to date with firmware and take care of your stuff....
can't of course speak for rental equipment....one of the reasons i prefer to own at least the camera....

 

[Matt Ryan]

I rent a lot of Epic and Scarlets and never once had a camera self shutdown. The only errors I have ever gotten were firmware issues a while back where switching modes would do something weird to the screen (cause a glitch in the lcd). A simple reboot fixed it. I have also never heard of anyone else having their rig shut down on it's own. So I would definitely look at the rental house. Thats almost like a power surge or some type of power issue to have the camera self shutdown.

If you can't view HDMI and SDI simultaneous than you are on a really old firmware build. The rental house should be keeping up to date. I'd switch rental houses immediately. Audio and video inputs do not effect one another, and a bug I have yet to hear of. A firmware update would most likely fix it.

Maybe your AC's load their pockets with magnets to fuck with you and the camera.

 

[Daniel Stone]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Very helpful. On set I kept thinking, "This is why the camera is so dirt cheap to rent." Among other not-so-nice things.

The rental house we use is not know for keeping their gear in tip-top shape, so that may have been a factor. I always get a DIT and we usually do have to upgrade the firmware ourselves during prep day. The firmware on this one was one version behind, which we didn't think was a big deal.

The DIT did a factory reset on set, after which the reboot issue improved somewhat.

To clarify, it's the audio that disabled the monitor. When we enabled the audio in the menu, the HDMI port stopped working (despite showing enabled in the menu). When we disabled the audio, the HDMI started working again. That's when we switched to the SDI port, which did not seem to be affected by the audio setting.

 

[Wendell Adkins]

Never had a problem with mine either. Bullet proof.

With all the anti-drone sentiment these days, it's good to know "Caliente" can take a "direct hit" :thumbup: Just to be safe though, maybe a kevlar jacket is in order!

 

[Lee Saxon]

Two words.

"prep day"

Part of your rental and budget needs to be devoted to prep, the day before, in the rental house, so that you have everything tested and working.

Totally disagree. It is absolutely positively 100% the rental house's job to test, clean, and repair the camera every time it goes out and comes back. Expecting the customer to pay for the privilege of doing it themselves is ridiculous.

 

[jimhare]

To clarify, it's the audio that disabled the monitor. When we enabled the audio in the menu, the HDMI port stopped working (despite showing enabled in the menu). When we disabled the audio, the HDMI started working again. That's when we switched to the SDI port, which did not seem to be affected by the audio setting.

There is absolutely no problem running audio and a monitor together. I use audio and HDMI together all the time.

Could be that the rental house never upgrades the firmware and you are running one of the very early builds.

I've never had any of the issues you describe.

 

[Ryan De Franco]

Remember how many boards are stacked like wafers inside that tiny little body... it's something like 26 right? And that compartment is smaller than the body in order to allow for air flow around it?

So we're talking all that power in a space the size of your fist. I know jack squat about electrical engineering but I bet that's hard. Given that HDMI carries audio, I bet the audio spec and the HDMI spec are in someway related. That one or the other fails means that something happened to that camera and it's a blessing it's still running at all.

Tell the rental company that the machine used on your orders needs to be sent in for service. Any self respecting rental house keeps track of the serial number of the item that went out on your job (even the "budget" shops here do). If they respond with we're so sorry that caused you trouble we are sending that body in for a check up right away, awesome. If you get lip service, fuck em, there is an eager owner operator in your area who babies his camera and is eager to rent for less.

The point of a rental house is service and reliability. If they are delivering the opposite then why bother.

As to prep day vs in house responsibility... I actually agree with Lee and David. It is entirely the rental house's responsibility to make sure a working camera is presented in the check-out bay, and it is entirely the AC's responsibility to show up and make sure it's without issue. As far as monies, I've never heard of anyone paying the house for an extra day's rental during prep, but I think David meant it's the producer's responsibility to pay the AC for prep.

Responsible rental house + responsible AC = two gear checks = the closest you've got to a failsafe.

The problem arises when you pay for neither.

 

[William Robinette]

With all the anti-drone sentiment these days, it's good to know "Caliente" can take a "direct hit" :thumbup: Just to be safe though, maybe a kevlar jacket is in order!

Carbon-fibre nano tube jacket or it's a lost cause :cheers2:

But you didn't hear this here....

 

[Wendell Adkins]

Good advice. Americans are very well armed these days!

 

[David Battistella]

You are entitled to your opinion, but I've never seen a production totally trust a rental house or vice versa. I don't know many pros who'd agree with you unless there is a prior relationship and even then it's sketchy.

The OP even states he had these problems with this rental house before.

A prep day helps both sides.

1. Troubleshoot
2. Jointly establish exactly the condition of each piece being rented.
3. Build and test the camera as it will be on the day
4. Set up menus framerates, black shading, etc.

You want to leave all of this to what? The morning of the shoot?
You'd be doing yourself and your client a disservice.

Even at a car rental there is a walk through and that's just turning a key putting it in drive and going on your way, it's hardly like prepping for work on a professional film set.

David

Totally disagree. It is absolutely positively 100% the rental house's job to test, clean, and repair the camera every time it goes out and comes back. Expecting the customer to pay for the privilege of doing it themselves is ridiculous.

 

[Mike Garrick]

Scarlet isn't ...the correct title for this thread is ......Why are the cameras for XYZ rentals so buggy ?

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Before I write the Scarlet off completely I wanted to get your thoughts.

It seems that whenever we have the Scarlet on set we spend the entire time debugging and rebooting. The client, crew and talent are all standing around while the camera department is trying to figure out what's going on with the camera.

For example, on set yesterday the camera would shut down by itself for no reason... batteries or wall power made no difference. Then it would kill the monitor signal. We figured out that our camera would not output HDMI and input audio at the same time. In other words, if we wanted to monitor the video through HDMI we had to disable the audio input. HD-SDI still worked.

Last month we had similar issues including error messages, dropped audio, unexpected shut downs. We rent from a rental house that has a fleet of 5 Scarlets, so I'm pretty sure we're not getting the same one each time.

The Epic has some quirks, too, but nowhere this bad. What are your thoughts? Typical or are we having bad luck?

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Very helpful. On set I kept thinking, "This is why the camera is so dirt cheap to rent." Among other not-so-nice things.

The rental house we use is not know for keeping their gear in tip-top shape, so that may have been a factor. I always get a DIT and we usually do have to upgrade the firmware ourselves during prep day. The firmware on this one was one version behind, which we didn't think was a big deal.

The DIT did a factory reset on set, after which the reboot issue improved somewhat.

To clarify, it's the audio that disabled the monitor. When we enabled the audio in the menu, the HDMI port stopped working (despite showing enabled in the menu). When we disabled the audio, the HDMI started working again. That's when we switched to the SDI port, which did not seem to be affected by the audio setting.

The title cut my attention, even so I don't own nor I intend to own a Scarlet do to my needs.

However...

I truly cation you and any one else in this forum to think a little more abut TITLES in their Threads, as not only they are at times misleading but start unnecessary polemics and bad name to what ever misrepresented, in this case the Scarlet!

Having said that...

RED has been running on the bleeding edge of technology and their constant FREE Camera Software Updates are the leaving proof of it, problem is that while more experienced users such as my self we always run on the latest BETA FW even in production jobs, every one else should NEVER run their cameras in anything less then the Latest RELEASE SW.


As for rental houses, only very few of the most respected ones in the industry do their job right, especially with cameras like the RED, some of them for ridiculous agendas, most of them for pure laziness and incompetent personnel, which never check the cameras when they return nor do they make sure they are represtined to manufacturer's specs before they go back out, they simply don't keep up with Reduser or Red.com to see what is the latest build or what, so this falls in the USER's responsibility to know the camera He/She is renting for the job.

I am sorry for your bad experience Daniel, and I hope this is just a lesson to you to be more careful whom you rent form and do the proper PREP before the shoot.

But it is also important to know and understand that the issues at time suffered are not always related to the Rental house at all, but instead do to unproper use of 3rd party cables and accessories, and or damaged connectors and or damaged cables which in turn create immediate function problems.

At last to add to the POSITIVE aspects of RED cameras... To my knowledge and experience in the several years with RED cameras, I can haply report that I only had one single issue ones, and that was do to using a BETA SW, which could have been fixed easy if I was prepared on set as I always am, just that that particular day I was running a very High Fever for the 4th day strait.

 

[Bob Minervini]

the title and issues of the thread are so general, and the user with so few posts that it sounds more like a troll.

be more specific, every piece of electronic has its bad days.

 

[Daniel Stone]

You are entitled to your opinion, but I've never seen a production totally trust a rental house or vice versa. I don't know many pros who'd agree with you unless there is a prior relationship and even then it's sketchy.

The OP even states he had these problems with this rental house before.

A prep day helps both sides.

1. Troubleshoot
2. Jointly establish exactly the condition of each piece being rented.
3. Build and test the camera as it will be on the day
4. Set up menus framerates, black shading, etc.

You want to leave all of this to what? The morning of the shoot?
You'd be doing yourself and your client a disservice.

Even at a car rental there is a walk through and that's just turning a key putting it in drive and going on your way, it's hardly like prepping for work on a professional film set.

David

Thanks so much for the input, guys.

I've talked to some DITs as well as the rental house and got awesome insight that coincides with David's input. They all recommended a prep day prior to a shoot, and it's something I'm going to budget for every shoot from now on.

I do understand (and have experienced) that all cameras can be buggy. That said, I got confirmation that while the Scarlet is a tad buggier than others, a prep day with a factory reset does wonders. A couple DITs told me that having to power cycle the camera a time or two on set to fix some quirks is pretty normal. As for HDMI, everyone is pretty much in agreement that we shouldn't be using HDMI on set, anyway. Case in point the SDI on the Scarlet worked flawlessly.

What camera we use is usually different from one project to the next and it's a lot of technology to keep up with - which is why we rent and hire DITs. The Scarlet is attractive to us because it gives a fantastic image and it's so cheap to rent.

This has been a great experience and will certainly change the way we work for the better.

 

[Michel Rabe]

A couple DITs told me that having to power cycle the camera a time or two on set to fix some quirks is pretty normal.

I don't think that's normal actually.

As for HDMI, everyone is pretty much in agreement that we shouldn't be using HDMI on set, anyway. Case in point the SDI on the Scarlet worked flawlessly.

I only use HDMI and it's flawless as well.

I guess it's really not the camera to blame. Rented gear gets used by many different people in many different ways and often not the right ones, and it might suffer from that.
A solution might be to find someone who owns a Scarlet and rent from that guy.

 

[James_Mills]

Mine was having all types of these same issues that slowly exacerbated until I finally took it into RED and had them fix it. I recommend it, fixed mine.

 

[Carlo Silvio]

on a shoot right now. while rolling, the f-Stop disappeared and only showed a dash. The iris went totally dark. Powered down a few times, changed lenses. Same thing. Then it just magically fixed itself right in time. For about an hour.

Was using the beta firmware. rolled back to 3.3.15 and it still did it. Now, it just fixed itself again.

also: using Nikon mount


EDIT: Problem was dirty contacts. That's the last time i eat pudding while cleaning my lenses.

 

[BrandonChristensen]

I've had all sorts of problems with mine...

Playback stopped working, audio inputs stopped working...had to send in to RED for that and they fixed it quick and shipped both ways on their dime which was great.

On a shoot recently the headphone jack just stopped working mid-take. Upgrading to the latest BETA fixed that (I was on the last stable build, I don't typically like BETA's).

Other than that it's solid...I'm just worried I'll have another glitch up soon after my 1 year warranty is up. Had I known, i would had bought the Bomb Squad thing.

 

[Neil Dearman]

I have had the same issue with the camera just shutting down or freezing for no reason? It was very frustrating!!!