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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 :)

Camera self rebooting...

I had the self reboot problem yesterday. It happens one time, during recording, without any choc on the camera, and not with any batterie (AC voltage).
My firmware was 18 (I had the problem before under 17 also). I don't know if the file has been loose or not (it was not an important shooting), but I had no corrupted files when i looked back into the Red Drive.
I have also the battery contact problem so i use the quickplate most often.
 
Regarding temperature, when it happened on our shoot we were in a fairly cold (read: we were all wearing jackets) warehouse/workshop. Not cold enough to be a cold issue, and definitely not warm enough to cause overheating. It was also an MOS shoot, so fans were running even during takes...

Good thinking guys, but a red herring I think.

Curiouser and curiouser!...
Dom.
 
Cail Young said:
This is with our #1295; and I left a message with Brian F about this - RED, any answers?
Click to expand...

Any answer to the reboot there? We've looked at most possible physical interactions with the camera (i.e. battery placement, rec. button, temperature, time, loose wire etc) and, unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a standard. That is, the reboot can occur at any time with no set conditions for probabiility. Is R & D still being figured on this camera to isolate the (common and annoying) problem that seriously needs fixing? On a side, and continuing with R & D to improve usability, can the placement of wires/battery/weight ratio (for balance and portability) be improved? I know there is more here.
Steve.
 
Hi everyone

We've faced same problems with our 4320 red, but we've also faced playback problems. The red drive should be the problem. Our camera is now in Red's hands. Waiting for news.

fred
 
We are still tracking this thread and trying to replicate here at RED. If you have had this issue, send a incident ticket to Tech Support with shooting conditions, settings, gear being used. The more data we can get on this, the better for our engineers to see if they can try to replicate here.

BC
 
Hi Brent,
The camera we are shooting with is #1295. Every day during our production in the last two weeks, the camera reboots randomly with no reason. It happened during rehearsals and during takes too. As mentioned by our camera assistant Steve Munro, we tried thoroughly to isolate any possible issues to no avail. Our gaffer mentioned that the same issue was present at all other RED shoots he was involved with and thought that the power connector is the culprit. Don't think so, the reboot was occurring even when the camera was untouched.

I am the DP of this feature film and I strongly recommended the RED ONE as our choice for the production. The producer is, to put it mildly, furious, as the reboots happened during crucial takes or during rehearsals with the actors. If this behaviour would be noticed to PCs, Macs, there would be an outrage around the community of users, firmware fixes or factory recalls would be in place in no time at all. I don't want to sound rude, I don't want to outrage the Red user community, but the word on set with an overwhelming majority of Mac users is: "what do you expect, it's just a DOS box". Don't shoot me, I am only the messenger!

I reported the incident as soon as I could, it was seconded by Cail Young who is hiring the camera to us, but heard nothing from Red so far.

If you want to speak to the producer, I could pass on to you his contact details in a PM.

This is happening during the production of a feature, I would highly appreciate if someone can look into it.
 
Valeriu, if it was a power connector issue, the camera would shut off, not reboot.

Have you and Cail filed incident tickets on this with the info I requested in my above post? While everyone at RED does check REDUSER, incident tickets are the "official" notification systems of issues from the user to RED.

As I also mentioned above, we are - and have been - looking into it. And I am reaching out for additional data points for our team here trying to replicate the issue.

Please understand that there are thousands of cameras in the field - and only a handful (relatively-speaking) reports of this issue. So without data points from the people experiencing the issue, it is a needle-in-the-haystack search trying to replicate. I know this is VERY frustrating to the people that have reported this. We are very much trying to help.

BC
 
Hi Brent,
Thank you for the quick reply.

Please get in touch with Cail, as they are handling the 'pre-post-prep' of our data files. They also have all the metadata info that can be relevant to you. I am sure he is most than happy to help.

I am only a humble DP feeding the camera's sensor some footcandels, with light fixtures bounced by actors' bodies and faces through a lens.
 
Hi Brent,
It was the gaffer that suggested the connector issue to which Valeriu stated, in his post above: "Don't think so, the reboot was occurring even when the camera was untouched". That is, as we've said, we know the camera would not reboot if it was this that was causing the problem.

I notice that your team is trying to replicate the issue - that is commendable. However, as we have also been saying, the reboot is completely random of any probability and, as such, cannot be predicted even if we isolate any possible connected causes such as, for example, using the back rec. button instead of the side. This means that, from our side - the user in the field trying to shoot a feature over several weeks on a camera that we need to be reliable for current and future use - the additional data points you are requesting have been fielded in all posts to this point (and I repeat): there is no one thing that causes this camera to reboot; there is no logical process that causes the camera to reboot; there is nothing we are doing in using the camera that causes it to reboot but we are, in contrast, trying to isolate possible reasons for it doing so, to no avail.

I'm relatively pleased that of the "many thousands of cameras in the field" that this is not happening to, the percentage of cinematographers and camera operators that it is happening to is "relatively small". So, aside from saying to you again that the reboot problem is completely random of any predictable temporal/spatial/thermal/physical interaction or occurrence and repeating this on an "official ticket", might I ask what, exactly, are the data points that we can give you to help with your R & D and getting this problem fixed so that we can finish shooting our film in the time we have to do it? That would be helpful.
Kind regards, Steve.
 
All fair enough, Steve. Not to get into a philosophical debate - but there is no such thing as "random" :) If some people (some very frustrated people, I know) are seeing this issue, there has to be a root cause. So, we want to do what you are doing here at RED to try to get the reboot issue induced. Tell us temperature, tell us what project settings, tell us firmware, tell us accessories hooked up to gear (both RED and third party), tell us power sources, etc.

And, yes, you are right - it could be that no "one thing" is the trigger of an issue. It could be four things in combination that cause an effect. In fact, with something as relatively low in quantity as reported with this issue, it means there are a lot of factors involved.

So, if you are getting this issue, please file an incident ticket with the above information. Right now, we are only going to be able to tell you "we are working on it". But the more data we have, the more we can zero in.

Hope that helps clarify and, rest assured, we have our top guys looking into this.

BC
 
Ok Brent.
I'll prepare a report card for the next seven days of shooting to try and find a pattern and will work with Valeriu and Cail in filing an incident ticket - thanks for the promptness.

And on a lighter note - philosophically, there is absolutely nothing random...

Steve
 
Thanks, Steve, Valeriu, and Cail. I appreciate your feedback! Even if you don't find that mystery pattern, still get us the environment if it does happen again!

BC
 
Brent@RED said:
Thanks, Steve, Valeriu, and Cail. I appreciate your feedback! Even if you don't find that mystery pattern, still get us the environment if it does happen again!

BC
Click to expand...

It's the Mysterium sensor at work! ;-)

On a serious note, maybe an error log could be recorded on the SD card ?!
 
As a postscript, we're pulling the camera from the feature on Monday and sending it back as soon as we can (will probably be a couple weeks, and I'll RMA it properly).

Have any other cameras with the issue gone back for repair?

Ticket being submitted as we speak.
 
first day of shooting with red number 4215, at least 15 unexplained reboots in a ten hour day at the beach. if i push the play button, it reboots almost every time. really a nightmare. we were using build 17 factory installed. it would reboot any time for no obvious reason. while recording, while idle, no explanation at all. i already loose this first time client, i don´t know what to do. please i need a way out, tomorrow i have the second and last day of shooting and i am already suffering. any clues? using reddrive, evf and red lcd with the battery on the red cradle. MAX setting and qt proxies enabled.
also, after the reboot, the lcd wouldn´t work, so we had to unplug and pulug the lcd cable.
 
It seems to be heat stress-related; in stress testing here in the office by rolling the camera to a RED DRIVE for hours (i.e. fan running at minimum) I am able to reasonably reliably trigger a reboot when the ambient temperature is 27-28°C. More tests later in the week once the camera's off a job.

We can rule out:
Monitoring (EVF only was connected)
Media (DRIVE connected, was happening with CF on the shoot)
Power (running from the AC supply)
Software (rolled back to 17)
This leaves only temperature and a component that is failing that is not failing in #242, our other camera.

Not good :(
 
Hi Cail,
As you probably know, the #242 is working great. No reboots in the last two days since we got it: both days were quite hot with temperatures well above the average Melbourne summer.
Wow!
 
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