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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Warning Autoformat erased my Footage!

J

Jeremy Neish

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First before anybody gets too upset for me let me say that the footage was unimportant test footage, so I'm not mad. Just a bit startled.

Here is how it happened:
I had some test footage on my RedDrive and I hadn't had time to copy it off. So I did something I've done in the past, I took all the files in the root of the drive and stuck them in a folder called "download later". So the root of the drive only had this one folder. I know this isn't best practices and I wouldn't have done it on a real project, but...

(I bet you can all guess where this is going....)

Then I upgraded my Firmware to beta 15 and then I reconnected the drive. Lo and behold it automagically started formatting the drive without any warning!

I would make a couple of recommendations:
A) Don't do what I did. It was silly.
B) Red: Don't automatically format the drive just because you can't find any of YOUR files on there. I would define blank as NO files on the drive. If there are any files on the drive at all please throw up a warning before autoformatting.

In the mean time, just in case you might use your RedDrive for something besides footage, you are forewarned, if the conditions are right, your Red may decide to unexpectedly erase it.
 
Frankly, using a RedDrive for anything other than recording Red footage direct from the camera is foolish in the extreme.

I don't think you can hold Red accountable for that, in any fashion - if there's footage on a Red drive you want to keep, move it to another medium.

Why would you use a RedDrive for anything other than recording Red footage - get a G-Tech drive for that (or whatever your preferred media).
 
Totally agree with you Jeremyn... We will fix this in the next update by throwing up a confirmation step.
 
Dominic Jones said:
Frankly, using a RedDrive for anything other than recording Red footage direct from the camera is foolish in the extreme.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but he didn't use it for non-RED stuff. He simply moved it so he could deal with it later and not have it mingle with new footage. Doesn't seem so crazy to me, though I do agree it's not best practice.
 
Another issue picked up on by a red user... the folk at red work with us... and we get a better product.

I still really like this system... there are detractors to the whole process being this public... but it does give us the opportunity to actually help out...which is so cool.
 
I agree with you (and Jarred). We will change this "feature". Very soon.

Jim
 
Auto-format

Auto-format

In the mean time, just in case you might use your RedDrive for something besides footage, you are forewarned, if the conditions are right, your Red may decide to unexpectedly erase it.
Click to expand...

There is a trade off to be made here between operational speed and file safety, as both obviously have merit. What sounds like has happened is you lost the visibility of the .profile and .r3d files to the camera operating system, so it looks like its a blank media. If either one are visible this shouldn't happen. Again this is Beta firmware so exercise due caution, but thanks for the feedback, and its already being worked on.
 
I agree that this is a dangerous feature.

At the same time I want to enforce something that I have told every 1AC,2AC,Loader, camera tech, producer, etc.

"TREAT YOUR MEDIA LIKE A FILM MAG"

You wouldn't crack open a 435 mag and poke around at the film (in the daylight).

You wouldn't unspool a roll of film before it went to the lab.

You wouldn't spool off your load before it went to the transfer

Etc.

NEVER EVER EVER rename/move/highlight/etc ANYTHING INSIDE A DIGITAL MAG. P2/CF/RED-DRIVE whatever. Copy and format is the only thing you should ever do.
 
RED Drive

RED Drive

Dominic Jones said:
Frankly, using a RedDrive for anything other than recording Red footage direct from the camera is foolish in the extreme.

I don't think you can hold Red accountable for that, in any fashion - if there's footage on a Red drive you want to keep, move it to another medium.

Why would you use a RedDrive for anything other than recording Red footage - get a G-Tech drive for that (or whatever your preferred media).
Click to expand...

This is just media management why not use a RED Drive for anything other than recording RED footage directly from the camera. I don't have mine yet but one of the first things I am trying is to record on a CF card then transfer to a Red Drive then connect the red drive to the camera and try and play it back out of the camera. It is just a storage medium, it is more about how you manage the storage of your content on it. If your management practical is one directional from camera to a red drive to another medium, that is fine. But I would like to get a bit more use out of the drives. If anyone has more info on why doing anything more with a red drive would be foolish, I would be interested.

And doesn't TED from Red own part of G-Tech or has he just sold up to Fabrik. RED Drive 320 GB raid, G-tech G-Raid mini 320GB (but cannot use on the back of the camera to my knowledge (anyone willing to test). "Not wanting these comments to turn into a debate like that had on the RED Lens 18-50mm glass equals Sigma 18-50mm glass.

My theory is that RED is taking suppliers commonly made components and tightens the specifications. Keeping the costed down on products and saves designing everything from scratch themselves. Leaving me more then happy to buy the red brand version of the product, even if it costs a bit more, over what I think could be the source of the product because it has met (or should have met) RED specs.

David
 
RED Drive is our own custom design. You won't find an equivalent product like it on the market anywhere. Guaranteed.
 
Actually just to chime in here with something similar, I had a Build 13 formatted card with some test clips on it which I'd already backed up. When I inserted the card it autoformatted. This is WITH clips on it (but created by Build 13).

After that experience I formatted all my media with Build 15 and it now correctly sees that there are clips on and doesn't autoformat.

So I guess this needs a quick Build 15 revision to be put out with that one change at least.

Besides that little potential gotcha, Build 15 ROCKS and is by far the best build of all of them!

HTH

Paul
 
Sorry, had just finished working two 16-hour days back to back and got the wrong end of the stick a bit - thought you were storing other footage on the drive...

Does make sense now that I've had some sleep!

Apologies for not reading your post properly (or at least, not processing the information properly!).
 
Red -Thanks for jumping on this.

After I posted my original message, I also noticed the issue that visceralpsyche pointed out. If you have a card with older footage on it (Firmware 13 or older), don't insert it into your Firmware beta 15 Red until you're 100% sure you've copied and archivied it off, because your Red will instantly autoformat it with this beta release of 15.

And, like I mentioned, I wasn't overly concerned about the test footage on the drive or I wouldn't have done what I did, but it was still quite a surprise.
 
I think autoformat in any form, even with confirmation is a bad idea.

The risk of agreeing to an 'are you sure' dialog accidentally is simply too great.

I don't want the camera wiping media unless I specifically ask it to, and the difficulty of that process in the current release firmware is just perfect. It is far enough down in the menus that you will not end up there by accident.

Red - please keep formatting buried in menus. Is should be hard to get to.

Even adding an option to turn off autoformat isn't enough. There would always be the risk it had been turned back on.
 
I kind of agree with CrewPix. Formatting is such an irreversible thing, it should require some steps and a last minute chance to back out. In my personal experience, that last step has been enough of a "are you paying attention?", that it's saved me heartache before.
 
Auto Format

Auto Format

jeremyn said:
I kind of agree with CrewPix. Formatting is such an irreversible thing, it should require some steps and a last minute chance to back out. In my personal experience, that last step has been enough of a "are you paying attention?", that it's saved me heartache before.
Click to expand...

Its being addressed, not in the next version of Beta code, but very soon.

The design goal for auto-format was only for media that was known to be blank - i.e truly unformatted (fresh out of the package) media, but the logic isn't fully baked yet obviously.
 
Stuart English said:
The design goal for auto-format was only for media that was known to be blank - i.e truly unformatted (fresh out of the package) media, but the logic isn't fully baked yet obviously.
Click to expand...

It's just too risky.

I don't want the camera making those kind of decisions for me. Ever.

Maybe you've inserted a card with a single bit corrupt in the FAT, maybe it was formatted FAT16 in another device and contains the only copies of your wedding photos.

The point is that having the camera wipe cards it doesn't recognize will cause somebody somewhere to lose something important, AND there is no logical reason why the camera should be automatically zapping stuff anyway. If you can't figure out how to format a card, you've purchased the wrong camera.
 
for once i agree with you Crewpix.. heh heh heh.. and its getting done.
 
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