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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 :)

Battery indicator - DC

roryhinds

roryhinds

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Was out shooting last night and after doing a battery change the Battery Indicator showed "DC" and no percentage so I guess the camera things its plugged in.

Is there anyway while fixing this we could have Time Remaining instead of percentage as this would be very useful.
 
Might want to check and make sure the power connector was inserted properly. Could be an issue with the battery plate and not necessarily the camera, if you're not getting a battery status report.

Batteries can indicate what % of charge they have left. Calculating time is different... The camera has to try and guess at the amount of power being drawn, including from external D-tap soruces, battery capacity, etc..
 
I'll check my connectors although I'm sure they where cool.

If the camera can display the percentage left on the battery shouldn't it be able to convert this into a time display. If 100% is 90 minutes then surely it could keep track of the batteries status and report back time remaining.

So if you drawing a large amount of power quickly by using the D-tap then the percentage/time would count down quicker.
 
Rory, that would work if the power requirements were always a known factor. And for some users, that may be the case. The point is, let's say your camera is equipped with the LCD and the Drive, battery lasts about 100 minutes as an example. The camera knows this, so at 50% battery it can say approximately 50 minutes remaining. But what if you plug in another peripheral, like the VF Impero, Inclino system, to the power tap? The camera isn't aware of this, and at 40% power it's reporting 40 minutes remaining, but in actuality, it's draining faster than that. The camera has to average and guess continuously to give a time guesstimate. I guess the best analogy would be like the time remaining figured on a download progress bar on your computer... % remaining is known, but the download rate and actual time remaining can vary due to external influence. Even internal operations can play a role. If it's averaging power left based on what the camera has been doing since powered-on, what if it suddenly changes? What if you suddenly stop shooting a 30-sec take every 5 minutes and suddenly roll on for 5 minutes straight? That takes more power and afterward the fan has to work harder to bring the temp back down. Camera said you had 25 minutes remaining before the 5 minute take, but after it's over and the fan has run for 2 minutes, you're told there's only an estimated 9 minutes of power remaining... How is the time estimate a proper measure of anything compared to a % remaining?

I know, I'm ranting... But I've never owned a laptop that can accurately report time remaining unless I only turn it on and run Word and nothing else until I shut it off. How is the RED going to be able to do it when it's probably even more dynamic in its power consumption?
 
was shooting again today and had the DC icon appear while using the battery.

Am I the only one having this issue?
 
Rory,
Assuming your using RED batteries:

Either your battery plate or cable is having an issue. As I understand it the battery plate has a hidden magnet in it that activates a magnetic switch in the battery to activate it's data output. Something could be messed up with that or the couple of leads in the power cable could not be transmitting the data properly.
 
I encountered the same issue today. Camera displayed DC while plugged into battery power..., noticed it mid-take, so rolled with it. But got boned when the camera just shut down with no warning. Thankfully the clip posted, but that is an annoying little bug that seems to require a shutdown and a battery swap to alleviate.

Also experienced LCD jitters, and a really fun moment where the EFV jumped to a really strange purple/blue monochrome image for no apparent reason. Double checked that I didn't accidentally hit false color.... that wasn't the culprit. Unplug and reconnect seemed to cure it.
 
unfamiliar with the bad battery plate syndrome..... is it terminal?
 
Battery Voltage as an alternative????

Battery Voltage as an alternative????

Would it be easier/simpler to display the battery voltage? And have settings in the menu so the camera doesn't drain your batteries, Red, AB, IDX or Lead Acid Blocks, to the point of no-return? (aka, batteries that need rescuing!)
As we all know, Li-ion, Ni-Cad, Lead Acid need different cut-off points, cameras such as those offered by Sony & Panasonic have these settings built-in, just specify which type of battery (or voltage)

It's common practice to use block batteries on-set, the lack of a low voltage warning does potentially a 2 minute delay on-set whilst changing batteries & rebooting! Assistants with a film background are used to monitoring batteries via the voltage page on the Arri & Aaton displays.

All of this is possibly wishful thinking, I'm assuming Red haven't installed any way of monitoring the voltage input in the camera, as it's built-in to the Red-branded Li-ions. Hopefully I'm proven wrong!

Peter Marsden
Technical Manager
Axis Films London
 
This should be really easy, and would be extremely useful. For some reason Red has showed no interest for a long time. But, again If there's interest, which there is, I'd sign a petition for this in a heart beat.

Nick
 
I suggeted that when the camera is plugged into to AC, the camera should read AC, this way it would eliminate all confusion. if it aint runnin' on AC it shows DC and level. Right now it shows DC at all times, least mine does.
 
Sorry to contradict but we have a similar issue and we tried several battery plate that otherwise work fine on other cameras. So we believe this is more of a camera issue. We wanted to wait for build 16 to see if it would fix the issue. If it does not then we'll have to send our camera back to Red to see what causes this DC 'syndrom' even when using a Red battery.
 
I got the DC symbol today (with battery as only powersupply) after upgrading to build 16, after a restart I got the % again...
 
I also support Red reading voltage of non-Red batts. And also supplying a list of certified batts that do not void warranty.
 
Just received my new battery plate and guess what?

It still shows DC all the time, so in my case it's a camera issue not a battery plate one.

Bummer.


Emmanuel
 
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