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Epic-X #2528 is a lemon and needs to be swapped, getting the runaround

M

Mike Halper

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I took delivery of Epic-X #2528 in the 2nd half of March. The purpose for the camera is 99% rental. The first job the camera went out on a few weeks later (after all accessories finally arrived to make the camera actually usable and cases could be made for everything) the HD-SDI port worked only intermittently when the camera was shoulder-mounted (tripod was fine since the camera wasn't moving) and the HDMI port didn't work at all. It went to Red for evaluation and repair and came back with the problem supposedly fixed.

It was sent out on another rental job for a large company for their national commercial and had problems, recording lines through R3Ds and having color channels swapped. We requested the camera be swapped out for a new once since it's clearly defective. It hasn't seen a single trouble-free day or shooting at all and is a lemon. Red requested log files and R3D's be sent over, which was done over the weekend as soon as we got the camera back. It's now Thursday and we haven't heard anything.

We used the camera for a job that we could be present at and overlook yesterday. The camera froze and recorded bad R3D's again. Today it was doing the same thing in some tests and the Touch LCD output started doing very weird things with the image being broken up and wavy and flashing, and now the output does not work at all. The HD-SDI output is also intermittent again.

We are now being told we have to send the camera in for evaluation. This is unacceptable. The camera was just in for evaluation and the repair that was done to it was not enough to make the camera work properly. We have a big job the camera is supposed to go out on tomorrow for one of the major studios. The camera is defective and is a lemon and Red needs to replace it today, but we're not getting the support that is expected to make this happen.

Someone help, please. We may have already lost 2 clients, and losing one as big as the client for tomorrow would be a major hit to our business.
 
How much testing did you do in house before sending it back out on rental? Did it perform well in the testing, and only go bad when out on location? I curious as to how this pans out, as we are planning to rent ours out to select clients. I hate dealing with intermittent problems, hard to trouble shoot.

I guess I would have pulled the camera from rental and found another to rent to them, just to save face with the client. Maybe you still have time to find a different body until you can be 100%sure your's is fully road worthy. If you dont mind, can you let us know what the problem was and what the solution was? If anything, just in case someone else searches and finds this thread.

Thanks-

Matt
 
Initially before the first rental, everything was working great during first brief use and during the production's prep. But that was always on the tripod and not during a real production with rolling many takes. No one does prep handheld or shoulder-mounted, so the first issue we had with the HD-SDI port going out didn't show up. And HDMI wasn't going to be used, so that wasn't even tried during prep. When the HD-SDI port kept going out they tried HDMI and found it wasn't working at all.

Then it came back from the production and we tested it (of course on a tripod) and couldn't duplicate the problem. So we sent it out again assuming it was some kind of user error. Of course they had the same problem and that's when we figured out it was only when the camera was being moved around. It went to Red at that point, they found the problem, and supposedly fixed it. Now it's doing the same thing again.

During both jobs we swapped the body for another, but that second body wasn't ours so we lost the rental income due to that, and the client was still super unhappy and we're not sure they'll rent from us again or even rent another Red camera from anyone. I think they were talking about going with Alexa next time.

Now the additional problem we're having is another intermittent problem with random R3D's having lines through them, color channels being swapped, the HD-SDI output not working intermittently even when on the tripod, etc. It also froze at times. Also now the Touch LCD went completely haywire and stopped working, and just now we've got it back on again, with no idea as to what caused that problem in the first place. The corrupt R3D's issue was while on a national commercial for a major national brand (I won't mention the name, but I'm sure close to 100% of the people on this board are familiar with it) and on another project we were on ourselves yesterday. And all of these issues have occurred on different firmware builds.

There's numerous intermittent problems with this body. It's clearly a faulty circuit board, processor, or multiples of those, and to have it exhibit these issues basically right out of the box without a single day of trouble-free shooting and not be exchanged for a new body is unacceptable. And we have it going out on a shoot for a major studio tomorrow. I'm sure if we send this body out and they have issues with it, that they'll never want to use Red again either, even when we go and swap the body out with one we'll have on standby.

So far these problems have cost us a lot of money. We just want a working camera that can be relied on and this clearly is not that camera.
 
Thanks for the additional data, keep us updated as to what happens. I would hope RED will take care of the issue.

matt
 
Mike Halper said:
... When the HD-SDI port kept going out they tried HDMI and found it wasn't working at all.
Click to expand...

Hi Mike,

Do you know that you have to explicitly turn on the HDMI output in the menus?
Settings-->Audio/Video-->Monitor Control-->HDMI-->Mode

The default for this is "Off"

We spent 30 minutes trying out different cables before finding that out!!!

Antony
 
Hey Mike sorry to hear from your bad experience. Glad Nick was immediately on the job and on it. I have to shime in and say I'm absolutely happy with my Epic X 2029, it has been in varying weather conditions in a place with very heavy humidity. Everything has worked flawlessly and all peripherals work great. Hope you have your problems sorted out soon, its a great camera and unfortunately, like any other electronics, one of those ends up a lemon (my old Mac G5 comes to mind). But exception does not make the rule!

Cheers,

Sergio
 
Mike Halper said:
Just want to throw out a kudos to Nick Grow in coming up with a quick solution that has us happy and active in Epic-X land once again. Thank you Nick and Red!
Click to expand...

How about sharing the solution? Is your camera running properly now?
 
Logs finally got looked at and showed it was a hardware problem. Camera was swapped out so Red can do a complete teardown of the camera to determine the flaw for future prevention of whatever the cause turns out to be. Nick even offered to keep me updated on what they figure out, which I'm looking forward to.

I have to reiterate how awesome it was that this was all taken care of so fast once they started looking at the problem. Once the decision was made to swap the camera and I said I was driving down to Irvine from the valley during rush hour Nick had it ready by the time I got there. It made the nearly 5 hours or driving there and back through traffic worth it. And now everything is ready for the 7am prep tomorrow morning for the big shoot, so I can rest easy tonight.
 
Mike, what's your plan to make up to those upset client and try convincing them again ? Maybe give them a massive discount on the next shoot and proof it ?
 
RivaiC said:
Mike, what's your plan to make up to those upset client and try convincing them again ? Maybe give them a massive discount on the next shoot and proof it ?
Click to expand...

Rent them an Alexa instead.
 
fine that everything is fine now....
but: what would happen, if you are not 5h away from irvine?
what, if you were in austria / vienna? such a quick problem solving might not be possible there :-(

best, norbert
 
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