Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Blinking LCD - Camera won't boot

Brad Hawkins

Brad Hawkins

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 29, 2007
Messages
186
Reaction score
0
Points
16
Location
US / FRANCE
Website
www.fxelements.com
About 50% of the time our camera will boot up just fine, the rest of the time the LCD on the back of the camera just blinks on and off. If it makes it to the point where it says "booting..." on the LCD, we're fine, but half the time it doesn't make it that far before going into the blinking cycle.

We've tried booting with all cables, media, etc disconnected. Sometimes it helps, other times it makes no difference.

I know that this has been discussed on the forum before, but it seemed like no one posted a solution. I was just wondering if anyone out there has figured this out?

I would send the camera back to RED, but we're a month out of warranty and right now we don't have the funds for the service charges. :violin:

The really frustrating part is that we never had this issue until about a month ago when we got the camera back from RED - from the audio upgrade and "free cleaning/checkup"
 
If you're not already on it, try Firmware build 20.1.3 - "Eliminated camera “stall” during boot up sequence."
 
ericyoung said:
If you're not already on it, try Firmware build 20.1.3 - "Eliminated camera “stall” during boot up sequence."
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion, but I should have mentioned that RED returned the camera loaded with build 20. I have since tried rolling back to build 17 and even the new beta build 21, but none of them seem to make any difference.
 
How old are your batteries? Having volts but no amps could cause that, enough juice to try, but then it fails, batteries read fully charged, but die almost instantly.
 
Is this a new problem or has it always existed? If it's always been there, maybe Red will look at it free of charge. These issues were pretty chronic in the early days and are nothing new.
 
Nick Gardner said:
How old are your batteries? Having volts but no amps could cause that, enough juice to try, but then it fails, batteries read fully charged, but die almost instantly.
Click to expand...

The batteries are a little over a year old, but the problem happens with both the batteries and DC adapter, so I don't think that's it.

jimhare said:
Is this a new problem or has it always existed? If it's always been there, maybe Red will look at it free of charge. These issues were pretty chronic in the early days and are nothing new.
Click to expand...

This is a new problem, just started happening when we got the camera back from RED. We were in Europe for three weeks right after getting the camera back, and that was when we started noticing the problem. If we had been in the US we would have taken it back to them immediately.
 
I have seen this a couple of times, although in those cases it wouldn't boot at all. The only other thing you can try doing is detach everything, and hold down the power button for 11 seconds and then release, then plug back in power only, and try again.

The only solution that ever worked for me though was, unfortunately, send it back home to RED for repair.

Tim
 
Tim Sutherland said:
I have seen this a couple of times, although in those cases it wouldn't boot at all. The only other thing you can try doing is detach everything, and hold down the power button for 11 seconds and then release, then plug back in power only, and try again.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, I'll give this a try this next time!

Chris Parker said:
are you feeding timecode to the camera thorough a lockit box??
Click to expand...

Nope, just the 5.6" LCD, sometimes the RED-Drive, maybe an external monitor, but we've tried unplugging everything, and it still has the problem from time to time.
 
Brad Hawkins said:
This is a new problem, just started happening when we got the camera back from RED. We were in Europe for three weeks right after getting the camera back, and that was when we started noticing the problem. If we had been in the US we would have taken it back to them immediately.
Click to expand...

If that's the case I would fully expect Red to be willing to look at it. If you explain the problem arose when they upgraded it. I completely understand your dilemma, best of luck.
 
jimhare said:
If that's the case I would fully expect Red to be willing to look at it. If you explain the problem arose when they upgraded it. I completely understand your dilemma, best of luck.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I thought, but when I called them yesterday and asked if they would take a look at it for free (given the circumstances), I'm in LA and offered to drive it in just to have someone look at it, but they said, I could only drop it off and pay the $500 inspection fee.

Then I would get the camera back a week later, but who knows how much the total cost would be, the $500 fee is just to inspect the camera, not fix it.
 
Why i keep come accross that Camera back from RED give new problem that was not there before.
 
If you have access to another set of drives/cables/LCD etc, you could test if the problem is in camera or in some other part.

Some of my friends cameras have had power issues and behaved strange, but all have been discovered during warranty period and fixed by red.

Battery plate and connectors ware during usage and will not last forever. Paying 500 for service and maybe another 200 for new connectors may prevent a total meltdown and many thousands in service. One camera here in Stockholm did catch on fire in just one of this major power short, so it can happen.

Very important is to be gentle to cables and connectors.
 
Brad, I will be happy to look at it myself on the house if you can get it to RED today.

BC
 
So how did this whole scenario play out? Problem solved by RED in any simple way?

I've been having the blinking back screen about 1/10 boots, but the booting... text would pop up after about 30 seconds and I'd be clear, sometimes it would take as long as 90 seconds... but today, on a commercial shoot it happened four times in a row and finally after at least 3 minutes of blinks, the booting screen saved the day.

Is this going to continue to get worse? Is there an easy fix or do I need to bring it in? Thanks in advance!
 
Jameson Jordan said:
So how did this whole scenario play out? Problem solved by RED in any simple way?

I've been having the blinking back screen about 1/10 boots, but the booting... text would pop up after about 30 seconds and I'd be clear, sometimes it would take as long as 90 seconds... but today, on a commercial shoot it happened four times in a row and finally after at least 3 minutes of blinks, the booting screen saved the day.

Is this going to continue to get worse? Is there an easy fix or do I need to bring it in? Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Yeah, sorry I never posted a conclusion on this topic. Basically, we dropped off the camera with Brent, and as Murphy's law would have it, the camera booted properly for several hours in a row. Of course when you actually want it to fail it works flawlessly :banghead:

Even still, they ran a bunch of tests, checked out the connections and still didn't really find anything wrong. So, we picked it up the next day.

Luckily we haven't had the problem since (knock on wood). So really I have no idea what happened, but as long as the camera boots I'm happy.

Brent and the team at RED were super generous and we really can't thank them enough!

Who knows, maybe the camera was just a little homesick and needed one more visit to RED HQ!
 
Lol, thanks for getting back to me -- yeah weird no one can get any kind of consistency on this problem or a solution.

Mine doesn't seem to blink when all monitoring options are unplugged like someone suggested earlier in the thread... so until that happens consistently I don't think I'll file that ticket -- not worth the 3-5 day wait yet, but thanks Brent.

-Jameson
 
hello, (from France)
We have the same problem since we put the new firmware today,
so, it is possible that the firmware was "bad" downloading ?
Do you think we need to return the camera to RED US or RED ENGLAND (pinwood) ?

thanks for your advise,

nicolas
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top