Build 15 2.2.1 Experience

[Nathan Beaman]

Hey there -

Finishing up a week of shooting a short and just wanted to share a few things about my experience with the latest build.

First of all - despite its many growing pains - it has amazing potential and I can't wait to see where it gets to -

The first and most annoying issue is that if we moved the camera quickly from one setup to the next - it would shut itself down. Which if you are familiar with the boot time - this is killer. A dozen people standing around waiting for camera - damn.

This seemed to happen more and more often through out the shoot - today was the last day and it must have happened at least 8 times.

Another major thing - we crashed the cam today! Damn. While filming a scene involving a close up of a fire the camera was fine - as soon as the smoke came it started to choke and dropping frames. Seemed like it couldn't handle the complexity of the image at 4k 2:1. Codec errors abound.

We tried several times with the same results. Bummer.

Other things -
720p preview seemed to have a string tint of purple in it no matter what monitor we hooked up to. Tried other SDI connects - same results.

The lcd problem stull hasn't gone away - stuttering and glitches abound

Can't stand the lcd quality or the god awful noise it makes - can't wait for a viewfinder.

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Overall - the raw images look fantastic without grading - i can't wait to see it together.

 

[Greg M]

The first and most annoying issue is that if we moved the camera quickly from one setup to the next - it would shut itself down. Which if you are familiar with the boot time - this is killer. A dozen people standing around waiting for camera - damn.

this sounds more like hardware error rather than firmware related...My guess is your battery is not fully seated.
Are you using Red batteries? If so make sure you push them in until you hear a click, otherwise you will have problems like this.

 

[Nathan Beaman]

hmm - i thought the same at first - we had a pretty green ac -
but i checked that immediately.

sometimes it would turn itself off with a full battery as well.

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe it wasnt a side effect of how others had handled the camera before - or the firmware.

I will say that during testing and before the upgrade we had no battery issues. Then again - I was also my own ac for the tests.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The battery mounts have been problematic on my camera as well, to RED's credit they replaced mine 3 times at no charge.

The preview out has exhibited tinges of various colors in different builds. Fortunately the RAW color data is not in any way affected - though it can be a challenge with clients on set inch:

My LCD is quiet and stable as are many others. Have you tried hooking up someone else's RED LCD to your camera to compare? Maybe a lemon got through QC.

 

[Dave Weber]

this sounds more like operator error rather than firmware related...My guess is your battery is not fully seated.
Are you using Red batteries? If so make sure you push them in until you hear a click, otherwise you will have problems like this.

Yeah the battery thing seems to be pretty common. I would double check connection before booting up camera.

 

[SF Geek]

I'm definitely still having LCD stutter problems. Has anyone had the codec error and not been able to fix it by changing quality settings: redcode 36 or twentysomething?

 

[Jarred Land]

Sounds like you might have one of the old bad battery plates, if you still have the camera, try and wiggle the battery while the camera is on, if it shuts down then thats the culprit, it doesnt matter if the battery is full or not.

As for the LCD.. where you using it with an HDMI source as well? the multi-monitor bug can usually be remedied by unplugging it and plugging it back in.

 

[roryhinds]

I've noticed power downs when moving the camera as well.

Will need to check if I have an old battery plate that is effected.

My LCD does make a loud buzzing noise when you have the brightness up, you have to dial it down to the darkest setting to get rid of the noise.

The EVF is fantastic but I must say the LCD is extremely useful and I could not life without it.

 

[cinemano]

I have RED number #303... shall i worry about battery plate issues?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I have had pretty much the same issues with the latest build.
(not with previous beta 15

1. Preview from disk doesn't work (playback stops and cam hangs)
2. Problemms with booting when disk is connected and formatting of the disk
(shuts off and goes into the dreaded "booting..." window.
3. Unforseen shutdowns (with full batteries.)
Sometimes had to re-boot a number of times when cam was cold (not like "ice cold", but just "not started for a while"
4. 4 occurences of "codec error" where the whole shot is thus lost. Cam as been on tripod when this has happened.

5. Weird monitor issues. Flickering and weird shit.

But, for now - I guess these are all beta woes... as they shoved up with the latest beta.

Gunleik

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

I've had power downs when moving cam as well. I thought it was because I have the AB solution with Hytron batteries. We've tried to locate where the connection fault is but now I believe it might be something else, with this many people reporting the same problem.


Fredrik Callinggard

 

[Peter Karlsson]

I also got Codec error when aiming the camera into a bright object like the sun :I I tried all different resolutions, but if I let to much light into the camera the codec errors went up in a flash.

 

[Nathan Beaman]

Sounds like you might have one of the old bad battery plates, if you still have the camera, try and wiggle the battery while the camera is on, if it shuts down then thats the culprit, it doesnt matter if the battery is full or not.

As for the LCD.. where you using it with an HDMI source as well? the multi-monitor bug can usually be remedied by unplugging it and plugging it back in.

nope - ive tried to repeat it today -
i think it could be an image thing -
if i leave the french flag down covering the lens so it sees black - i am unable to repeat the same effect -
though with it up and the camera "seeing" i have been able to repeat it.

- then again - with the shoot being over I'm back to being my own ac for the day

 

[jbeale]

I recall that several firmware versions ago, there were reported cases of a codec error when any significant portion of the frame was overexposed (full white). So possibly this has come back again, except with the added feature that that the camera shuts down also? (Just an uninformed guess.)

 

[Nathan Beaman]

I recall that several firmware versions ago, there were reported cases of a codec error when any significant portion of the frame was overexposed (full white). So possibly this has come back again, except with the added feature that that the camera shuts down also? (Just an uninformed guess.)

not a single overexposed highlight in the whole film - im proud to say!

I do wonder though if some of it has to do with more complex images, bandwidth and portion of red raid being full - at least as far as the codec issues go -

harddrive efficiency does drop dramatically once it fills over 80% and begins to decline much earlier - so perhaps that plays a role as well

 

[Greg M]

I've had power downs when moving cam as well. I thought it was because I have the AB solution with Hytron batteries. We've tried to locate where the connection fault is but now I believe it might be something else, with this many people reporting the same problem.


Fredrik Callinggard

It does not make any sense that this is a firmware issue, think about it...how does the firmware know the camera is being moved?

We were plagued with this issue today, and I can pretty much guarantee it is related to the Red battery plate. In our case the AB plate that mates to the Red plate is the source of the poor connection which caused us at least a dozen shutdowns today alone. A royal pain in the ass...when is the damn AB plate going to ship??

 

[Nathan Beaman]

I know some users have had cables made to connect their arricam dolly batteries to the red and havent had these issues at all -

i think digitalfx has nailed it

 

[Paul Leeming]

So first off I know that Build 15 is now released at v2.2.5 (and we have updated to it) but yesterday we got this error using v2.2.1 when using 4K 16:9 at 23.98 at both RedCode 28 & 36 (recording to RedDrive):

It seemed that when the detail in the shot got too high the camera would freeze the shot and return this CODEC_ERROR statement for several seconds before stopping the recording and returning to normal.

Switching to 4K 2:1 with any other combination of framerate and RedCode quality fully fixed it and we couldn't crash it no matter how high the detail in the scene got.

Also using v2.1.7 we managed to show the split screen bug where the top half had severe image degradation and the bottom half looked fine (click for full 4K TIFF (54MB):



The settings for that shot were 4K 2:1 23.98 RedCode 36, mounted on a tripod and static.

I haven't had a chance to duplicate these conditions with the release build yet but in the mean time if anyone else has experienced similar issues with these builds please chime in here, or if anyone at Red can definitively say the bugs are squashed that would be great too!

With RedCode being rewritten from the ground up in Build 16 I'm hopeful these will soon be non-issues anyway. I can't wait to see how much better the image can be (and if the 85mm Prime chart in another thread is shot on an alpha build 16 it's probably a good indicator of what's to come!).

Cheers!

Paul

 

[Karl H]

so build 16 is a complete re-write of Redcode? I never knew that. Very interesting.

 

[Elizabeth Lowrey]

visceralpsyche, that's a beautiful location. Mind if I ask where it is? And are those Yoshino cherry trees?