No build is safe anymore!

[conrad gaunt]

By popular demand from most of my rental clients I'd like to point to some of the things they're complaining about (latest job was this Friday on the set of Hollyoaks):

The Red one:

-Freezing, both menu and during POST, often. very very very often. Codec errors, audio codec errors, green screen. THEY CREW ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE CAMERA, AND MORE EXPENSIVE

-Not being able to reliably playback clips from camera after a problem, because playback IS too often a problem

-Charger sometimes not charging batteries

-The battery v-lock not "getting a grip"

-The LCD sometimes turning blue monochrome or displaying strange colours during booting, and then staying like that, forcing a reboot and wasting up to 15minutes depending on the size of the crew (1 minute for every crew member stood like a lemon)

-The ridiculous boot up time exagerating every problem further

-The fact that all of the above occur with build 16.2.4,16.2.5, 17 and 18, making it totally useless for TV production environments in any serious way. Until recently b16 was my safety net. This Friday that changed.

-Noise breaking down into nasty vertical stripes during low-light shots, instead of just noise (a desired look on a recent shoot)

-The cost of five Red wingnuts


Redcine:

-waiting for an export and finding garbage output eight hours later

-its lack of audio export options

-its incompatibility with, er, most computers I try it on


My personal gripes would also include:

-The lack of a meta-data driven workflow, except from Cineform, making shooting RAW footage a drag, and much less useful

-Fedex

-The general air of secrecy around everything Red, making getting technical answers difficult, and partial answers more likely

-Fedex

-The proprietory, non-editable R3D format.

-Fedup

-The lack of uncompressed RAW output. Is Red using a non RGB colour space in the R3D? Whats the problem with RAW non white balanced uncompressed output?

-Fedex

-Customs

-Lack of a hardware repair facility not involving the two aforementioned problems, meaning I'll find a third party to repair my cradles faulty cable rather than waste my time ever again contacting Red about any hardware problem that isn't related to the actual camera body.

- The fact that as soon as Red release a camera that is "reliable", be it a much cheaper Scarlet or Epic, the R1 WILL BE OBSELETE, regardless of the R1s functionality

- Not having time on set to log every error in detail

- The fact that Red spend ANY time defending Panavision "attacks" (yawn) on Reduser etc, while my camera is being a B*****D!!

What I do like:

-The images (in good light), which do justify getting paid

-Also, being able to fry an egg on the camera body after four hours in a lit interior and being able to warm my fingers on the rear LCD.. oh, hang on, that actually makes me scared..

-my rep polo@red.com, but especially my soundboard brent@red.com

- I no longer believe that something that gets so hot, will ever be fixed with software, although it may get more reliable. But my belief (call it blind faith), not just hope, thats things will get better, and that Red are working hard, keep me going. I NEED a reliable camera, hopefully Monstro and Full Frame, and at the best price possible to keep me onboard long term. The extra functionality and reliability (fingers crossed) will justify the extra money, the full R1 refund (although the dollar value has changed for me in a negative way) is definately FAIR (not generous, fair. The R1 IS a prototype. A good one that has proved a point) IMHO

thats off my chest. Roll on next week.. but what build shall I use in the meanwhile? Where's my 18-sided dice..:wacko:

 

[Cail Young]

I agree with you on most counts, however:

-Charger sometimes not charging batteries

Don't run the batteries all the way down and this is far less of an issue.

-The battery v-lock not "getting a grip"

Have you got the latest battery plates?

-Noise breaking down into nasty vertical stripes during low-light shots, instead of just noise (a desired look on a recent shoot)

A Black Shade may have helped here.

-The cost of five Red wingnuts

I did want to single this one out - as it's a bit painful after you break your first one!

Redcine:

-waiting for an export and finding garbage output eight hours later

Amen. But perhaps you should move to Metafuze or Premiere?

-The proprietory, non-editable R3D format.

Premiere Pro. Possibly Avid very soon, and possible FCP very soon as well.

-The lack of uncompressed RAW output. Is Red using a non RGB colour space in the R3D? Whats the problem with RAW non white balanced uncompressed output?

Camera RGB and Linear Light gamma at 5000K give you this. Make sure you're putting it in a 16-bit TIFF image sequence, though.

- Not having time on set to log every error in detail

Not really RED's fault, but the Write Log function helps.

 

[mikeburton]

Hey Ronx,

Sorry you have had a less than desirable experience so far with your camera. Maybe you have a faulty board in your camera or something cause I haven't experienced half those issues on my personal camera.
However, I have worked with quite a few RED's on many different gigs I must say that not all are built equal. Some are downright rediculously inpredictable and not worth being on a professional set. Some are an absolute joy to work with and all create amazimg images which we can all agree. Maybe you should request an evaluation of your particular camera or call RED and talk to one of their support guys. They are great at trouble shooting issues.
I hope your issues become minimal soon.

 

[conrad gaunt]

Hey Ronx,

Sorry you have had a less than desirable experience so far with your camera. Maybe you have a faulty board in your camera or something cause I haven't experienced half those issues on my personal camera.
However, I have worked with quite a few RED's on many different gigs I must say that not all are built equal. Some are downright rediculously inpredictable and not worth being on a professional set. Some are an absolute joy to work with and all create amazimg images which we can all agree. Maybe you should request an evaluation of your particular camera or call RED and talk to one of their support guys. They are great at trouble shooting issues.
I hope your issues become minimal soon.

I know this. Mine was one of the "never much of a problem" ones. However, I had a loose sensor cable, leading to intermitant problems. It went back, got a full service an quality controlled. Came back with a rear record button that sticks and the v-shaped molding on the cradle had a split down the middle.

Its been getting worse recently. The first thing it did on Friday morning was boot and hang. After a reboot we recorded a soundcheck, but it froze in Post. Two or three times during every new scene. Not funny.

 

[conrad gaunt]

Don't run the batteries all the way down and this is far less of an issue.

-usefull tip, I try not to

Have you got the latest battery plates?

-Who knows, 1xcradle and 1xbelt.

A Black Shade may have helped here.

-Thats what Red always say. Its never made a blind bit of difference to anything that I've noticed.

I did want to single this one out - as it's a bit painful after you break your first one!

-It was a metaphor actually


Amen. But perhaps you should move to Metafuze or Premiere?

-Yeah, Premiere, and buy Cineform Prospect 4k, I'm on it
A long time ago in Red history someone compared Cineform codec to R3D, Jim said "Different products". Well, they sure are frankly.

Premiere Pro. Possibly Avid very soon, and possible FCP very soon as well.

-No, you misunderstand, I mean a RAW "meta-data" driven workflow. These programs don't have that, they're for offlining in my opinion.

Camera RGB and Linear Light gamma at 5000K give you this. Make sure you're putting it in a 16-bit TIFF image sequence, though.

-No it doesn't. A raw image is a greyscale bayer pattern. Its 1/3 the size of a TIFF, and consists of an unaltered array of values direct from the sensor/R3D. Once you debayer it, it becomes a TIFF, but that is not a RAW file.


Not really RED's fault, but the Write Log function helps.

-Whats not, the Write Log function, or the unreliable camera? I'm responsible for neither..

 

[Brent J. Craig]

Sounds like a sick camera. Send it back again.

The only problem I'm seeing here is that some Reds won't boot if both an EVF and LCD are plugged in.

 

[Meddy MOST]

Sounds like a sick camera. Send it back again.

The only problem I'm seeing here is that some Reds won't boot if both an EVF and LCD are plugged in.

Ouch this is pretty impressive to read that... it's like you are all speaking about an old car which need to be handled with care as well as tips and tricks ...

Really make me afraid ...
Could be nice to have an official statement one day regarding all this numerous glitches ...

 

[conrad gaunt]

Sounds like a sick camera. Send it back again.

The only problem I'm seeing here is that some Reds won't boot if both an EVF and LCD are plugged in.

I don't have an EVF

 

[conrad gaunt]

Sounds like a sick camera. Send it back again.

The only problem I'm seeing here is that some Reds won't boot if both an EVF and LCD are plugged in.

I don't have an EVF, running a hdsdi preview from the hdsdi preview DIN doesn't cause a problem does it?

 

[jbeale]

Sounds like hardware issues are at least part of the problem, for what that's worth. I believe Red has said they'll allow 3rd party debayers at some point, but I think it's not at the top of their list.

 

[Brent Carter]

Ronx, just sent you an email...

BC

 

[Alex Carr]

\\A lot of those things can be eliminated or worked around. Honestly send it back, I've sent multiple bodies back to the rental house's on other jobs.

 

[sander kamp]

RED ships battery chargers with new firmware these days. The old firmware refused to charge a battery if it was too hot, you would have to cool the battery down and try again, the new firmware keeps trying until it thinks it is okay to charge.

With the audio board upgrade you can have your charger upgraded as well, you would have to ask RED if that can be done separately. I have two chargers, one with old firmware and one with new firmware and the old one was always a pain to use. In this climate (Thailand) batteries run hot all the time and I would have to cool them down with a fan before charging them.

 

[D Namir]

A premature camera

A premature camera

The bottom line is that this camera is way way too much premature.
This is also reflected in the manufacturing process when not all cameras are created equal.
I think many of the Red owner were blinded by the low price (which is not so low considering all the accessories, some of them are useless, and the fact that a new model, Scarlet or Epic, will make the old accessories useless) of the camera and the non-existing glamorous halo of the movie business.
I am sure in the future many will be more careful.
This will affect also the Red company and unless they will be more precise with their R&D I can't see a repeatable enormous quantity sales like they had with the R1.

 

[Ian Laurie]

wow. and yet I was just on a feature, two reds, for four weeks. in all that time we had one battery pop off (battery got bumped against a wall) and a bnc-din cable get yanked. both of which had nothing to do with red. No offence meant towards you or anyone else, but who is handling your camera?

 

[D Namir]

wow. and yet I was just on a feature, two reds, for four weeks. in all that time we had one battery pop off (battery got bumped against a wall) and a bnc-din cable get yanked. both of which had nothing to do with red. No offence meant towards you or anyone else, but who is handling your camera?

Yes, you are lucky. In a way I am too. No major issues with the one that i work with (sometimes batteries are not charging, sometimes the camera loose its "zero" color, sometimes the monitor shows squeezed image and sometimes some other things).
I learned to work around it.
The fact is that the customer doesn't care. He pays for the day rental, the crew cost him a lot and he wants a working camera, and he is right.
By working around the problems, we are covering Red for not delivering an end user camera.
On the other hand, their customer service is really trying to cover and solve the problems, I must admit and be honest.
I guess these are some of the problems that comes with a new camera from a very new company.
Hope all this will be corrected in the future.
Red, don't rush delivering the Scarlet and the Epic. Make it well. Rush is from the devil.

 

[Appleguy]

I have to agree with the battery plate issue. I have a red cradle and a Red battery plate all brand new got only a month ago and a tap on the bottom of the battery makes the battery fly off everytime.
My sony BP's from my DSR 500 NEVER did this and slamming the battery home on the plate twenty or thirty times has done nothing to rectify this.
This is clearly a manfacturing flaw and really needs to be looked into it isn't somethign that should be put up with those batterys should stay locked on until you release it.

 

[David Wyatt]

To everyone with battery plate problems get your camera in for the audio board upgrade as soon as your number's up because Red also replace all your battery pins at the same time - never had a power problem since.

Codec errors however are still are a huge problem, Build 17 doesn't seem very stable at all (I haven't used Build 18 much since we tend to avoid it on professional shoots - but hopefully this will be more stable when it eventually makes it out of Beta). As others have speculated there appears to be a variance in the reliability of different model numbers (which could be down to different components used in different production runs...who knows?).

On a recent shoot I saw just about every codec error known to man - audio codec error, post error, playback error...green screen of death, black screen of death, booting hang, posting hang, even Rocketio error which I haven't seen for a long time. I'm beginning to get a sneaking suspicion that these will never disappear completely, even on Epic - they're the data equivalent of getting a hair in the gate - we'll just learn to adapt with these errors, and be prepared to deal with them as they arise. I'd be very interested to hear how common these kind of errors are on other data cameras which I don't have much experience with like the Arri D-21 & the SI-2K. Anyone have any feedback?

Unfortunately the plain fact of the matter is that in these error situations on a busy set you simply don't have time to write a log file without looking like a complete w***er - your priority is to get the camera working again which sometimes requires a re-boot and even more waiting around. Unfortunately and unfairly these situations can reflect badly on the camera crew in question but it reflects even worse on the camera itself and its reputation within the industry. It's probably the number one worry people have when they ask us about the pros and cons about shooting with the camera for the first time - they've already heard the rumours through the industry of unreliability. If, for example, the camera loses production a minute every other day that could equal thousands of pounds/dollars in lost time over the course of an entire feature.

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].

 

[JanneJansson]

Yepp, funny things on build 17, and 18. Im still on 16 on my own cam. Best build I have used.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

On B18 here. Seems a lot more stable than B17. I don't want to go back to B16, not that it was any better than 18, which is pretty damn good here. I can't roll back to 16 anyway -- I need to use 16GB cards. The only problem I seem to have with B18 is the occasional audio fault playback problem. Supposedly that gets fixed with the new audio board. I need to send my camera in, it's past due for upgrade - probably will in the next week or two.