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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 :)

First Shoot

D

Dave Dessel

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I've had my camera for about a month and have been testing it extensive. Overall, I'm thrilled with the jaw dropping image quality, and the workmanship of the product. The Red One is an incredible value, and I don't expect the need to purchase another camera for several years. It's that good.

I just had my first shoot which was a commercial last Friday. Before the shoot, I tested playback from the Red Drive on release build 15 and it consistantly locked up the camera. I would then have to disconnect the battery and completely re-boot. It was obvious that this would not go over well on a large commercial produciton.

During the shoot we recorded the 720 output to an AJA ioHD into Final Cut as a workaround. With twenty clients in the room and the first time out with the camera, this was the only way to make the Red a viable tool within the agency/business demands of the shoot.

Everyone was thrilled with the picture quality, as we reviewed numerous takes in-depth off of the AJA io. It was connected to a large plasma screen which worked out great.

Had I not had the AJA io HD on hand, as well as an assistant recording and playing back the takes, it would have been the last time that I would have been able to use the Red with these clients and the producer. Reviewing takes is critical on a large commercial shoot. I hope this one gets fixed soon. Otherwise working with the camera was a fantastic experience and the shots look absolutely stunning.

After the shoot we created dpx files with Red Cine of selected takes. The multi render went flawlessly since we avoided the Quicktime issue entirely. Today, the client gets a 500 gig drive filled with super-high quality images that were down converted to their exact specs. No deck was need or used in this process. Incredible.

-Dave Dessel
 
Since having a VTR guy on set is standard practice on most large commercials this isn't to out of the ordinary, but I agree playback needs to work 100% of the time.
 
Dave Dessel said:
During the shoot we recorded the 720 output to an AJA ioHD into Final Cut as a workaround. With twenty clients in the room and the first time out with the camera, this was the only way to make the Red a viable tool within the agency/business demands of the shoot.

-Dave Dessel
Click to expand...

I have an AJA ioHD as well and had thought about this as a workflow, but how are you getting a clean feed while shooting? I only get a clean feed on playback (I have no problems playing back from Red Drive on Build 15).
 
Hey Paul,

I'm not recording a clean feed from the camera. It's the 720 preview with frame lines and time code that the AJA was capturing. As stated earlier, this was for playback on the shoot day so that agency creatives and their clients could review takes instantly without experiencing the camera crashing.

Final deliverables were dpx files extracted from the Raw data on the Red Drive. That worked great.

As Mike stated in his earlier post, it's standard procedure to have separate playback capabilities on a commercial. The issue here is to accomplish this without the help of external hardware and an assistant. The last thing any of us want is to have clients loose confidence in the system at the moment they are trying to review material and expectations are high. This is a major presentation/business issue that I'm sure will be resolved.

-Dave



Paul Kalbach said:
I have an AJA ioHD as well and had thought about this as a workflow, but how are you getting a clean feed while shooting? I only get a clean feed on playback (I have no problems playing back from Red Drive on Build 15).
Click to expand...
 
On a presentation with (non-beta) 15, I had to tell the clients, that playback is from the computer thus far... I didn't want to go into "booting..." on playback :)
 
Paul. you say you have no problem playing back?

how many clips do you have on the drive?

My drive RED998 with build 15 has 260 clips..... it will play clips back all the way to 236. then it freezes... no buttons do anything, and the camera needs to be restarted. every single time.

PS it would be nice to hit "right" at clip 260 and it would loop to clip 1 and play that.
mike
 
Hi Dave,

Just want to check a couple of things:

1. When you hit play you get a still image - hit play again & it starts to play back - that's what you were doing, right?

2. Did it lock up just trying to play back just the last take or were you trying to cycle back through several takes? I've found playback sometimes seems to lock up if you try & cycle through the takes too quickly (give it a few moments to settle before you click back to the previous or next shot) - it takes a while & is a pain but at least it doesn't lock up & need re-booting (60 of the longest seconds of your life when you're on set surrounded by "creatives".

3. Were you recording to the RedDrive? Do you have the same problem trying to play back from Compact Flash cards? Is it still happening now after the job - if so maybe try re-installing release Build 15. If still no luck try re-installing Build 13 (that was the last release-level build) and see if the problem persists (if not it would seem like a Build 15 issue which would be a worry since it's meant to be a release build!)

4. If you were delivering DPX files (no need for proxies?) does that mean you were shooting in 4K 16:9 (rather than 4K 2:1). If you're still getting the playback problems maybe see if they persist if you film something in 4K 2:1 instead?

Let us all know if you find any solutions or whether the problem still persists for you.
 
This is what i do to keep clients happy:

I check every function I will need to use (on that particular version of the firmware build) before going on a shoot.
I keep several builds on hand (on harddrive actually), so that I can upgrade/downgrade if I get a serious issue.

This way the only troubles I had so far have been minor, and nothing a reboot didn´t fix
 
Still a problem

Still a problem

I would say that on my camera, there is definately a problem with release build 15. The Red will always lock up after playing a clip for a few seconds off of the drive. This does not occur with release build 13.

I was shooting 2-1 4K Redcode 28 the entire day. I was aware of the problem before the shoot and because I was prepared with the AJA io hd there were no problems meeting client expectations.

My concern is on a shoot where using the aja is not practical and client monitoring is required.

All this being said, I really love the camera, it's certainly the best one I have ever owned. Shooting with it is very addictive as the end result is fantastic.

-Dave
 
cckid said:
Dave hi,

I have a red on back order and I already have aja iohd...which connection cable did you use...hd-sdi or something else??...
Click to expand...

I used the preview out which is sdi 1280 X 720, which can be used for content evaluation only.

-Dave
 
Dave Dessel said:
I would say that on my camera, there is definately a problem with release build 15. The Red will always lock up after playing a clip for a few seconds off of the drive. This does not occur with release build 13.

I was shooting 2-1 4K Redcode 28 the entire day. I was aware of the problem before the shoot and because I was prepared with the AJA io hd there were no problems meeting client expectations.

My concern is on a shoot where using the aja is not practical and client monitoring is required.

All this being said, I really love the camera, it's certainly the best one I have ever owned. Shooting with it is very addictive as the end result is fantastic.

-Dave
Click to expand...

Weeird - looks like Build 15 is dodgy for your camera (have you tried re-installing Build 15 yet?). We've not had any similar problems with ours on 15 - do you get the same problem playing back off of Compact Flash cards? Could be a dodgy drive? If you could access to a second RedDrive it might answer that question?
 
Dave,

this is going to sound odd, but what are you using to power the camera?

i've begun to get the impression that questionable power may be the culprit for some of the problems we've experienced, including playback issues.

the camera seems to work better running on RED wall power than AB power or block batteries. i don't yet have enough experience with build 15 and its just a hunch...but i'm curious what you were using for power.

p
 
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