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EPIC: Lost Takes When Power Cuts

Abraham Williams

Abraham Williams

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Hi,
I am wondering if anyone could give some insight into a problem that we had on our last shoot with the Epic. We were shooting onto Red SSDs. In the middle of the first take we lost power. After we powered back up we continued with one more take then changed Media.

When they went to back the card up the first shot was gone. Only the second shot was there... fyi the first shot was 43min long.. I was adamant that I hit record, but unfortunately no one would believe me.
So in a freak attempt to clear my name I went over everything that happened. I know that I constantly check the rolling timecode (color red) during takes. I talked to the sound guy and he assured me that he would have known if the Epic fans were in stand-by mode. So the only obvious thing was that the power died during that take that we lost.

I proceeded to test this. I set up both of our Epics, and one of our Red Ones, and I rolled two takes per camera. The first takes I cut the power in the middle of them. I rebooted then took another. On all of the cameras only the second take was on the card. I lost all of the first takes.

From what I gather from this experience, when I record to SSD drives, the file only buffers to the card after I stop the record. I am not sure if this is correct but I am wondering if anyone else has had this similar experience. If so, are there any solutions or work arounds that anyone might know of? Is there a setting in the camera that can make the footage buffer to the card during the take?

Any advice would be greatly appreciate!!!

Thank you very much!!!
 
That seems like a pretty serious bug. I had a couple of occasions with my RED ONE where we were rolling long takes and the battery got bumped off the cradle, but the take was always there and intact. Hopefully this can be addressed.
 
had it happen on a epic on a shoot before, 2 firmware builds ago, and dropped power still saved the clip, only only a little bit of the clip at the end. You should email RED direct about this asap. they had it right 2 builds ago, guess something changed.
 
I would try red undead. Be interested to see if that could recover the file. Chances are the data is there, just not the necessary file structure.
 
If you lose power in the middle of a recording, it's best to pull the mag and then run redundead on the mag.
The footage is already on the drive but you can overwrite it by recording again in some cases.
 
Deanan said:
If you lose power in the middle of a recording, it's best to pull the mag and then run redundead on the mag.
The footage is already on the drive but you can overwrite it by recording again in some cases.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the responses. We are trying redundead today. Fingers crossed.

I'll post an update.
 
I'm having a problem in Redundead trying to recover the footage from the SSD. When I type the command in I get a "permission denied" message for the SSD. Any insight would be awesome.

Thanks again
 
Abraham Williams said:
I'm having a problem in Redundead trying to recover the footage from the SSD. When I type the command in I get a "permission denied" message for the SSD. Any insight would be awesome.

Thanks again
Click to expand...

try:
sudo redundead ...
 
newbie question from a Scarlet X soon to be owner, where do I download Redundead? Does it come installed in the camera firmware or is it a separate software to be downloaded?
 
It's on the red.com/support it's on the beta page in it's current version 2, it runs through terminal on the mac. I am not familiar with terminal and hate figuring out how to define which disk it shall save to - luckily I have only needed it twice in almost four years.

Hope Red works out the problem with lost takes if power fails.
 
Hi enrique, thanks I am great!

Good to see you getting onboard, I am sure you will be putting your Scarlet to excellent use!! Hope to see some of your stuff! Hope you have a great time!

Eirik
 
Deanan said:
If you lose power in the middle of a recording, it's best to pull the mag and then run redundead on the mag.
The footage is already on the drive but you can overwrite it by recording again in some cases.
Click to expand...

Is this for all cases? Do the Epic (and Scarlet) always fail to complete a clip if power is lost?
 
Abraham Williams said:
When they went to back the card up the first shot was gone. Only the second shot was there... fyi the first shot was 43min long.. I was adamant that I hit record, but unfortunately no one would believe me.
Click to expand...
Why are you doing 43 minute takes? Take it from me, on any format, 10-12 minute takes are a much wiser idea. If nothing else, you need to give the crew and actors a break every so often. This is unless you have an unstoppable live event like a concert, a play, or a speech.

The longer the takes, the bigger the files; the bigger the files, the more potential issues with transfer time, backups, and recovery.
 
I believe that Redundead is a really nice toy. But it runs only on Mac.
I'm a Windows guy so that solution won't work for me.
Any other solutions out there?

Peter
 
Marc Wielage said:
Why are you doing 43 minute takes? Take it from me, on any format, 10-12 minute takes are a much wiser idea. If nothing else, you need to give the crew and actors a break every so often. This is unless you have an unstoppable live event like a concert, a play, or a speech.

The longer the takes, the bigger the files; the bigger the files, the more potential issues with transfer time, backups, and recovery.
Click to expand...

Sometimes 10-12 minute takes just can't happen. I was on a shoot where holocaust survivors were telling their stories - try interrupting someone who survived being operated on without anesthesia that you need to take a break because your crew gets tired in 10 minute intervals... just remember where you are emotionally right now and we'll jump right back into it K?

We all do the best we can in the circumstances we have to shoot under.

Also R3Ds are broken up into 2GB chunks which minimizes the risk of lost footage.
 
Jake Bastian said:
Sometimes 10-12 minute takes just can't happen. I was on a shoot where holocaust survivors were telling their stories - try interrupting someone who survived being operated on without anesthesia that you need to take a break because your crew gets tired in 10 minute intervals... just remember where you are emotionally right now and we'll jump right back into it K?
Click to expand...
Documentaries have been going on for 100 years. Even in a documentary situation, you need to let people pause and grab a drink of water or take a break and catch their breath. I would say 20-25 minutes, tops. Continuous 43 minute takes are too much of a strain. If it's a critical situation, I'd say shoot with two cameras and stagger the camera loads.

It wasn't that long ago in the 16mm days that even an 11-minute take was rough, and they could reload in less than :30 seconds. I've done some 7D projects where they'd fill up CF cards every 15-20 minutes or so, and when that happened, the interview subject invariably said, "oh, thank god! Let me have a minute for a quick break." It's just human courtesy.
 
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