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Drop Frames at Rock Concert?

Mark Andersen

Mark Andersen

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I recently shot a live rock show and had a terrible problem with dropped frames. I can only guess this may have been caused by low end vibrations from the music or some other type of harmonic resonance causing the drives to vibrate and skip. Has anyone had a similar Problem? Are there any experts on this phenomenon?
 
There are reports of this all over Reduser. You have a delicate platter spinning at 7200RPM with a piece of ceramic floating only microns above it. What do you think happens when you shake it violently?

Loud music, gunshots, helicopters, fast cars and screaming are all incompatible with delicate spinning hard drives.
 
I had it happen really bad when filming an electronic act. It was funny (in that non funny way) watching the drop frame counter go up with every bass beat.

Get as far away from the subs as you can and maybe try wrapping the drive in something to sound proof it.
 
Buy one of the 3rd party shock mounts and if that is not enough to keep frames from dropping, opt for the REDRAM drive.
 
stevesherrick said:
Buy one of the 3rd party shock mounts and if that is not enough to keep frames from dropping, opt for the REDRAM drive.
Click to expand...

In my experience, the ET shock mount won't do it. It's the waves penetrating the HD case, from what I can tell.

Luckily, any sort of cloth wrapped around the drive maybe an inch or two thick has always solved it for me...you'd think you'd want a lot more to insulate but it's never taken much to fix for me.
 
NateWeaver said:
In my experience, the ET shock mount won't do it. It's the waves penetrating the HD case, from what I can tell.

Luckily, any sort of cloth wrapped around the drive maybe an inch or two thick has always solved it for me...you'd think you'd want a lot more to insulate but it's never taken much to fix for me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I suppose it's a crapshoot. I filmed a techno show with zero dropped frames using the ET mount. Wonder if it has anything to do with where the drive is attached. I always hang mine off the side of the camera vertical.

If I was in a pinch, I would definitely use the cloth. Best solution though is REDRAM.
 
stevesherrick said:
Yeah, I suppose it's a crapshoot. I filmed a techno show with zero dropped frames using the ET mount. Wonder if it has anything to do with where the drive is attached. I always hang mine off the side of the camera vertical.

If I was in a pinch, I would definitely use the cloth. Best solution though is REDRAM.
Click to expand...

Based on the audio engineering classes I took 15 years ago, it probably has more to do with where standing waves are in the room, the specific amplitude, and specific frequency.

In other words, very hard to predict other than really loud equals danger, and in my cases, spare clean tshirt over drive=fixed.
 
Im in Manila, Philippines right now, where I just finished working as DP on a 10 RED camera production featuring the band Journey in concert here. As you might guess, Journey has an enormous sound system which cranks out some serious DB and vibration.

All the cameras close to speakers and/or vibration sources used RED Drives mounted with ET Shock Mounts and ET Speedy Clamps. After the concert I helped the DIT team backup all the RED Drives that were used, and we verified all the files, meticulously scrubbing through them. We had absolutely zero dropped frames, which matched what the camera operators reported, that their cameras showed no dropped frames in the dropped frame indicator box in their EVFs.

I've yet to experience dropped frames when using an ET Shock Mount with the RED Drive - in concerts, speeding boats, in helicopters, on bumpy cars, etc.
 
Not shooting a concert, but I recently went through a job with lots of dropped frames. We were shooting in a foundry, molten metal and all that, heavy machinery... Lots of low frequency vibrations, magnetic fields, etc.. RED Drives were useless, even on ET shock mounts! CF cards couldn't record long enough because of where we were positioning the camera a lot of times, too much hassle to change very few minutes. Had to buy the RED RAM. :)
 
I have shot (produced) several concerts with 4-5 RED ONEs, and although we have had a dropped frame here and there we have gotten by without serious issues, but we have protected our drives:

I have had a lot of luck taking out the screws and the rails in the cradle - then packing the drive gently in molton, and slipping it back in securing it with tape - this mostly works very well.

I had a RED ONE on a Moviebird crane, right in front of the main speakers for a (loud) two hour concert, and we had some issues during the sound check, so I loosly wrapped molton 4-5 layers around it and strapped it to the camera, we had 44 dropped frames over 2 hrs.

We have used the Element Technica mount also, but I never trusted it for the cams close to the speakers - as I thought the vibrations working directly on the surface of the disk would be a problem that the rubber bands couldn´t cope with. But after reading several testimonials on here, I will do more testing next gig.

In conclusion, when shooting Live shows with loud sound, you absolutely need to take precautions, if you use the cradle (unmodified) - you will get dropped frames. But you could do well by improvising with fabric and tape...

I hope RED will adress this issue in future versions.

EDIT:misspellings...
 
Eirik Tyrihjel said:
I hope RED will adress this issue in future versions.
Click to expand...

I'm betting that the days of cheap and reliable solid state media are nearly upon us and the current RED Drive will be the last we see of motion or vibration sensitive media. ...I hope.
 
Those of you who somehow experienced a few dropped frames when using the ET Shock Mount may want to re-think how you're mounting the RED Drive/ET Shock Mount to the camera. Ever since I received the prototype Shock Mounts I beta tested (over a year ago), and since I received my production versions of the Shock Mount, I have consistently mounted the drive/shock mount combo to an 15mm or 19mm rod via the ET Speedy Clamp. I believe the drive/shock mount combo is a little more resistant to vibration of any kind or frequency when mounted by the Speedy Clamps to an aluminum or fiber rod. Perhaps the single small contact point to the camera of the clamp lessens the amount of contact surface with the camera.

The camera, lens, and accessories can act as "radar dishes" to pick up airborne vibrations, thus the more surface area you have on the camera and its accessories, the more airborne vibration the camera picks up. Our shoulder held cameras in this 10 RED camera Journey concert all used small zoom lenses, no matte boxes, and thus very little surface area to collect airborne vibrations. Beyond that, all those shoulder held RED cameras, which were mounted on ET Mantis rigs, had the RED Drive/ET Shock Mount/Speedy Clamp combo mounted transverse and low on the camera smart side on a 15mm aluminum or fiber rod, thus the drive/shock mount was not sticking way up in the air like a vibration collecting radar dish. I do also believe the aluminum or fiber rods transmit very little vibration from the camera through the Speedy Clamp.

Again, 10 RED cameras, all using RED Drives, in a super loud concert arena, with the cameras near heavy noise/vibration areas all using ET Shock Mounts on the drives, connected to the camera by ET Speedy Clamps - and not one single dropped frame from any camera. The proofs in the testing - but as DP for the Journey production, and having used the Shock Mount/Speedy Clamp solution for a year now in shaky/vibration situations, I expected no dropped frames - and that's exactly what we got.

I'm not disputing that some of you may actually have found ways to get dropped frames when using an ET Shock Mount. What I am saying is if you re-think how/where you're mounting the shock mount/drive combo, and cut back on vibration collecting accessories, you'll find you'll probably be able to eliminate dropped frames altogether.
 
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