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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 :)

Epic Fail (help if you can)

D

Drew Suppa

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It's been a helluva Day One.

I'm DIT on a 2-camera RED shoot and have had nothing but issues.

I've got a MacBook Pro I'm downloading the data from CF cards and the REDdrive and exporting to two G-RAID G-DRIVE Q's. Both the G-RAIDs are on USB 2.0 and I've kept my Firewire800 open for both the CFs via Lexar reader and for the REDdrives themselves.

Applecare was useless to me and RED Support is closed because it's Sunday... I'm open to suggestions.

The REDdrive for B Camera isn't mounting on my computer; it doesn't show up in Disk Utility nor in R3D Data Manager, which I'm using to verify and transfer the data to the G-RAIDs.

I've tried the Firewire 800 and the USB 2.0 on the back of the REDdrive and neither get it to power on. I've also tried both with the power cable plugged in at this point, thinking it was a power issue. Alas, nothing.

The Firewire 400 port is useless to me as I've got a new MacBook Pro. I'm kind of out of options.

Any suggestions?
 
Sounds like a bad day! Just to confirm have you tried usb 2.0 with the REDdrive power cable plugged in?

Were you using the power cable when the problem began?

Did you ever successfully mount the REDdrive from B camera?

Do you have a Firewire400 to Firewire800 cable you could try?
 
have you ever worked with Red footage before? Did you test your rig before the shoot?

The drive requires a power supply, are you sure you have the correct power supply that comes w/ the Red Drive?
 
Julio Quintana said:
Does the RED drive play back clips when attached to the camera? Silly question, but have you tried restarting the computer both with and without the drive connected?
Click to expand...

The drive played footage back while affixed to the camera body, though our 2nd told me it eventually "did something funky."

I have restarted the computer with and without the drive, and with and without the power cable for the drive itself.

It will not show up in Disk Utility, nor the Terminal with REDUndead.

Sean Rawls said:
Sounds like a bad day! Just to confirm have you tried usb 2.0 with the REDdrive power cable plugged in?

Were you using the power cable when the problem began?

Did you ever successfully mount the REDdrive from B camera?

Do you have a Firewire400 to Firewire800 cable you could try?
Click to expand...

USB with the power cable was attempted; the power cable was not used when attached via Firewire800 when it briefly mounted prior to the checksums; we didn't have down-time to try to mount back to B Cam; unfortunately, no, a Firewire 400 to 800 cable is the only thing I don't have with me in my arsenal.



digitalfx said:
have you ever worked with Red footage before? Did you test your rig before the shoot?

The drive requires a power supply, are you sure you have the correct power supply that comes w/ the Red Drive?
Click to expand...

I don't really have time to respond to condescending remarks, but yes, I have worked with RED footage quite a lot.

A and B Cams were prepped by our ACs while I was in Aspen on another show. I did not personally prep the cameras nor the REDdrives.

The drives don't require independent power if they are powered off of Firewire800; in any other configuration, they do need external power.
 
Sorry if that came off as brash, DigitalFX. I might have taken your tone in the wrong context. It is, after all, the internet.
 
At this point, it's been confirmed the drive failed. It'll be sent back to RED tomorrow for data recovery. Hopefully we'll have a full recovery.
 
Suppatime, I have always heard to use power with the drives even when using fw800 to extend the life and integrity of the drive. Different strokes for different folks! Good luck with your issues.
 
I've seen the R2E before; seems like a very useful cable.

I agree that independent power for the drives is better for the longevity of the drives themselves, but as this morning proved, a piece of rental gear that has been abused in the past will eventually fail, especially in the digital domain.

I'll keep interested parties posted on what transpires; I hope RED can recover the footage.
 
Flat out, bus powering the RED Drive is bad, bad, bad. It is under volting the drive and will eventually kill it. If you talk about rental gear being abused, that is one of the ways. Only when your hand is forced should you not.

Past that, sorry to hear of your issues.

USB 2.0 through R3d Data manager... those are some long transfers.
 
Hi Shawn,

The firewire 800 port cable looks interesting.

I want to get one but could I ask why is it 9 pin to 12 pin? is that standard or is the one end male and one end female?
 
Suppatime said:
Sorry if that came off as brash, DigitalFX. I might have taken your tone in the wrong context. It is, after all, the internet.
Click to expand...

No problem, I know how it is under the pressure of a shoot.
I would recommend that you always use FW800 AND the power supply for the Red Drive...that's our SOP, anything else is not advised unless you are in the jungle somewhere.

Suppatime said:
The drives don't require independent power if they are powered off of Firewire800;
Click to expand...

This is really bad advice.
One more point, even though USB may work, its not recomended unless its an emergency...and quite frankly I dont know why anyone would manage a two camera shoot with USB.
 
I usually have independent AC power for the drives when connecting to my computer, but as I thought initially that might have been one of the issues (a potential surge or a failed adaptor), I resorted to powering off the bus alone. It has worked for me in the past.

As of 3:00PST, a PA has taken the drive and will be taking it to the RED Ranch tomorrow. I should be expecting a phone call tomorrow morning.

When I first received the drive, it looked faded and pretty beat up; I assume it spent all of last summer in the raging heat of the Mojave Desert and the better part of the winter being thrown off the Hollywood sign over and over.

I wish I was here to have prepped the drives beforehand. My fault for taking a job two days after I flew back into town from Denver.
 
Suppatime said:
At this point, it's been confirmed the drive failed. It'll be sent back to RED tomorrow for data recovery. Hopefully we'll have a full recovery.
Click to expand...

I wouldnt give up yet, have you tried FW800 + the correct power supply?
 
Iv'e had this problem my self on feature shoots very frustrating so I looked into it these are my conclusions.

You are definitely better of supplying independent AC power to the Reddrives.
You must connect the power to the Reddrive first before the FW800 on the Reddrive.
Must connect the Reddrive port before the computer one.
You must use a surge protected and preferable battery backed up power source such as a UPS.

I have sen and heard of many drives getting screwed up as a result of faulty power supplies and unstable power sources.
Good luck.
 
also consider express card expansion cards, fw 800, esata, i even have a cf express card reader. all for different scenarios of maximizing bandwidth. (if you have the new 17 inch macbook pro not the 15 inch one cuz apple was also epic fail on that) hope you guys made out well with just cf cards, SSD is the way to go...
 
Honestly, we've been using mostly bus power with our Red Drives for about 18 months now with absolutely no indication of issues. A FW800 port provides up to 45W; the ports on the current MacBook Pro specifically provide around 18W. A Red Drive consists of two 2.5" hard drives and some electronics. Based on the typical power consumption of such drives, it's unlikely the whole mechanism uses more than 10W, and it's probably more like 6 or 7W.

Moreover, there's power management on the bus. If a device tries to draw too much power, the host system knows about it, and simply refuses to power the device. It doesn't power it, but incorrectly. And even if it did, most electronic devices simply won't work at all if the power is too far outside of the correct (typically fairly narrow) parameters; they won't sort of work but suffer subtle long-term damage.

Absent a specific contraindication from Red (preferably attached to a technical explanation of exactly what the problem is, given all of the above), I really wouldn't be too concerned about using bus power for Red Drives. And it's damned convenient to be able to download to a laptop with no external AC.
 
Tom.Wong said:
also consider express card expansion cards...
hope you guys made out well with just cf cards, SSD is the way to go...
Click to expand...

The 15" MBP fails at having an Express Card slot; this is one of the first times Apple has really let me down, and I've had to reconfigure my rig as a result. The economy prevented me from acquiring the 17"... I just don't have the funds.

Unfortunately with two cameras, the $1mil budget of this show wasn't able to spring for the SSDs, nor did the rental house we got this package from have them to rent out.



Chris Kenny said:
Honestly, we've been using mostly bus power with our Red Drives for about 18 months now with absolutely no indication of issues...

And it's damned convenient to be able to download to a laptop with no external AC.
Click to expand...

We're on a stage right now, which is why I'm glad to have the power that we do. My reference to bus powering the Firewire800 REDdrives was done on a show where I barely had shade nonetheless an actual location where I was left alone to transfer data. I've been on multiple shows now where the generator has been killed without being warned, and although it's not ideal, it's much nicer to know I haven't destroyed a drive with data because it was powered off of my laptop's battery and backup rather than potentially damaging the drive by a failed AC system.
 
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