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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 :)

Build 30.5 - "audio error"

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Bryan Golder

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Running build 30.5.0 on Red One/MX and camera is reporting "Audio Error" in the middle of takes. It's infrequent / intermittent. Sometimes it just stops the take, but twice last night it crashed the camera, requiring a reboot with a half dozen actors and 60 extras on the set. We switched to 16GB CF thinking maybe it was the Red Drive malfunctioning - didn't see the problem for the remainder of the evening but I'm not convinced that was the solution as problem was intermittent to start with.

Anyone seeing this? Thoughts on cause? Thanks.
 
No idea of cause, had it two nights ago (once).

Shot build 30.5.0 MX sensor to 320Gb RED drive. Lost the take and it crashed the camera, it was early in the evening so I got worried, luckily it happened only once and I didn´t loose anything important.

My first thought is bad drive cable.
 
Running into this again today - 1 time out of 8 takes. Making everyone nervous. Anyone at Red know if this is a Red Drive issue specifically? We are @ Redcode 42, so I figure if it was a codec/bandwidth error, then CF's would be less reliable.

Sound to camera is 2 channels, line input. If it's actually an "audio error" would disabling one track help?

Thanks.
 
Also we are double system so as a troubleshooting step I'm disabling audio rec track #2. Just seems strange..."audio error"...what does it really mean?
 
I had a couple as well the other day on set. I changed the fan setting to hot and made sure there was a little slack in the drive cable. We were MOS but the audio was still recording from another setup, so turned that off as well.

I started a bug thread, but no responses came. But yes, would love to know what "audio error" is.

Jason
 
I don't think it actually has anything to do with audio itself, as on earlier builds we experienced the same thing with all audio tracks switched off. We've had a few of those crashes lately again, and indeed it's hard not to get nervous. I want my equipment to work.

We mostly had these problems when more than 50% of the red drive was full. Copying your shots and formatting the drive usually helps. Still, a proper solution that prevents it all together would be very welcome.
 
happened once in a while to me.
disabling the audiochannels did the trick for me.
i am not recording sound to the cam though.
 
I exchange media every time the camera moves, so usually not more than 40-50GB on a 320 Red Drive. Had three more "audio errors" since going to only one audio record track (track 1). Sound mixer is pissed - says, "it's not an audio error, it's a camera error". ;-) Have swapped out Red cables, and kept track of errors for each "mag number" - so far, it's a wash. About the same for all Red drives and cable combinations. Can't trace it to any one thing, so I'm chalking it up to a Red OS/firmware issue. It seems to happen in spurts - two takes aborted, or camera crashes twice, then it clears up for a while. That made me think it's heat related since camera gets some downtime when that happens, but this set is not hot - I've certainly worked in worse temperature conditions with Red. What's new here is Redcode 42/MX sensor/build 30.5.
 
Happened only once today. Still...this is way too regular of an occurrence which is blowing takes every day. Hoping Red might chime in here as to whether this is a known issue or not...?
 
Had two more of these "audio error" crashes yesterday. No audio tracks were rec enabled (MOS). Also had the camera get stuck on zoom/focus assist display mode, had to reboot to get out.
 
You guys are talking about the "Audio Fault" error, right? It doesn't seem to happen when I disable the audio. On-camera audio would be nice, though. You think it might be a drive issue?
 
I've been keeping track of what media is used when the error occurs and how often - it's happened with all 3 of our Red Drives, so either all the drives are faulty, or the cause lies elsewhere. Also swapped out drive cables (we have 3). 98% of the time we're fine. Average is about 2-3x per day we get this error.

The other bug - camera getting stuck on monitor zoom/focus assist - has happened 4 times so far on this shoot.
 
Bryan Golder said:
I've been keeping track of what media is used when the error occurs and how often - it's happened with all 3 of our Red Drives, so either all the drives are faulty, or the cause lies elsewhere. Also swapped out drive cables (we have 3). 98% of the time we're fine. Average is about 2-3x per day we get this error.

The other bug - camera getting stuck on monitor zoom/focus assist - has happened 4 times so far on this shoot.
Click to expand...

Were you shooting in the hot sun? I've only gotten the audio fault once in 4 days, and that was near the end of a day in the hot sun. Also, is your audio enabled? It happened for me with the audio enabled and no mic plugged in. Disabling the audio and enabling channel one to record a scratch track have both worked fine so far (3 days).

On earlier shoots, I would only get it once in a while (like, once every couple days), but I just took it as a given and restarted, but I kinda feel like getting to the bottom of it now, as much as that's possible.

I emailed the Red guys and they were amazingly prompt and helpful. They had me send them a log and said the drive was the only thing reporting errors, and I should send it in (or rather, let the rental house know so they can send it in). Interesting that it's happening more frequently for you.

I also feel like it's somehow related to the stuck-in-focus-check mode bug, since the focus check definitely got wonky around the time the audio fault error popped up.
 
Same thing happened to us last week. Its the first time I've seen it happen, and it happened maybe every 5 takes or so. The next day everything was fine (we were shooting in moderate temperatures both days, so I don't think it was temperature related.).

Were you guys jam synced when it happened?
 
Bryan,

If you haven’t already I would recommend filing a support ticket, it will allow the techs to work with our engineering team find out some answers for you.

http://www.red.com/support

Best Regards,

Michael
 
Michael, I called Red tech support during the last week of the shoot. The rep was helpful and said this was a known issue reported by other customers which is unresolved, and that a possible workaround was lowering the data rate from RC42 to RC36. We never tried that (DP vote was no) opting to acquire max image quality and live with the potential for the error to occur.

In the end, I'd say we had an average of 2 of these errors per day throughout the entire 3 weeks of principle photography, with perhaps 1 or 2 days where the error did not occur. Disabling audio did not solve it. Different media did not solve it.

About 10-15% of the time the errors occurred immediately after going into record while slating or shooting charts. The rest of the time, the error occurred anywhere from 15 to 90 seconds into a take, while actors were performing.

Temperatures throughout the shoot were typically quite cool. On a couple days where interiors got warm in close proximity to lights, we used ice packs.

But I have a hard time blaming any Red issue on temperature after the shoot I did last July where we were in 100+ degree temps for 20 days straight without a single issue.

Were you guys jam synced when it happened?
__________________
Andreas Mendritzki
Click to expand...

Yes, now that you mention it...jam sync was enabled throughout the shoot.

My two shoots w/build 30 so far are this one over the past month (Red One MX), and a 3D shoot prior to that using build 30.5.0 on a Red One (no MX).

On the 3D shoot I had genlock, jam sync, USB link enabled. I had two "audio faults" on day 1, and I had one reel where two takes had corrupt frames (2 takes on a 16GB CF). I suspected heat in that case because we had HMI's blazing on a poorly ventilated stage. The remaining 2 days on the 3D shoot were uneventful.

Prior to build 30.5.0, I have never seen this "audio fault" issue.

-Bryan
 
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