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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 :)

Forged Weapon killing mags on power up

Haven't read the entire thread lately, but is this just showing up on WEAPONs? Not having a shoot going at present I've been reluctant to turn on my WEAPON CF until something is determined to be causing any problems. But I have a RAVEN I could be doing the occasional test with if it is still bullet proof.

Wonder if RED could release a bare-bones kinda firmware to install for those whose cameras don't interact as expected, to use until the glitch is found?
 
Elsie N said:
Haven't read the entire thread lately, but is this just showing up on WEAPONs? Not having a shoot going at present I've been reluctant to turn on my WEAPON CF until something is determined to be causing any problems. But I have a RAVEN I could be doing the occasional test with if it is still bullet proof.

Wonder if RED could release a bare-bones kinda firmware to install for those whose cameras don't interact as expected, to use until the glitch is found?
Click to expand...

Elsie, wouldn't that require RED romadmit that a problem even exists?
 
Chris Angelich said:
Elsie, wouldn't that require RED romadmit that a problem even exists?
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Surely that isn't something they are worried about?

I suspect they don't want to rush into admitting something that may turn out to be of a different cause later on.
 
Well from the two threads that address this issue the problem has occurred with roughly 12 different weapons so can it still. E considered an "isolated" occurence? So far, not a comment from Red
 
Chris Angelich said:
a total loss of if this issue/problem was something that was only an inconvenience most if not all of us could deal with it. However when this issue causes a total loss of clips/ images / data / a day's work this is totally unacceptable.
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Agreed 1000%. An inconvenience can be worked around. Data crisis...cannot.

I have remained on the older brains and OLD firmware because I love their stability/reliability.

I personally would love to hear new word from RED.

And would also love a REDUNDANCY record feature. IE a second mag slot at the back that can serve as a "backup".
 
Chris Angelich said:
Well from the two threads that address this issue the problem has occurred with roughly 12 different weapons so can it still. E considered an "isolated" occurence? So far, not a comment from Red
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Chris to be fair, RED has commented on this. Brent has been pretty active on this thread, and announced some firmware updates earlier that were designed to tackle this issue.

So they are aware. It's also the weekend, and understandable they may not be monitoring this thread.

Obviously, it would be nice to hear back from them, and see what updated answers their "white coat" lab techs come up with....as recent issues like yours and Erich's suggest this has NOT entirely gone away.

RED has great customer service, so I have full faith they'll figure this out. My guess is what will be most helpful is clear feedback from customers like you about what exactly is happening.

But yes, until there is a definitive ANSWER...it is unnerving, for sure.

Question - what battery plate where you using?
 
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Nick Morrison said:
Agreed 1000%. An inconvenience can be worked around. Data crisis...cannot.

I have remained on the older brains and OLD firmware because I love their stability/reliability.

I personally would love to hear new word from RED.

And would also love a REDUNDANCY record feature. IE a second mag slot at the back that can serve as a "backup".
Click to expand...

4k monitoring would serve this purpose. That is, output to something like an Atomos Flame that can record a 4k Prores image onto an SSD. If the Mini Mag records and offloads successfully, the Atomos SSD can be erased and re-used.
 
Yes Elsie, one could record internally and also externally.... But the question is: WHY should we have to jump thru hoops, add extra costs/time to prevent something that should NEVER occur. Certainly not as often as it does and not following the same reasons for differing bodies and users.
 
Chris Angelich said:
Yes Elsie, one could record internally and also externally.... But the question is: WHY should we have to jump thru hoops, add extra costs/time to prevent something that should NEVER occur. Certainly not as often as it does and not following the same reasons for differing bodies and users.
Click to expand...

Agree completely... just Jonesing for 4k monitoring. '-)
 
Nick Morrison said:
Chris to be fair, RED has commented on this. Brent has been pretty active on this thread, and announced some firmware updates earlier that were designed to tackle this issue.

So they are aware. It's also the weekend, and understandable they may not be monitoring this thread.

Obviously, it would be nice to hear back from them, and see what updated answers their "white coat" lab techs come up with....as recent issues like yours and Erich's suggest this has NOT entirely gone away.

RED has great customer service, so I have full faith they'll figure this out. My guess is what will be most helpful is clear feedback from customers like you about what exactly is happening.

But yes, until there is a definitive ANSWER...it is unnerving, for sure.

Question - what battery plate where you using?
Click to expand...

Nick, I fully admit to being a "newbie" to Red, but I have shot over 1.3 million feet of 35 mm negative and 600 hours of Arri Alexa footage so I am not a noob in regards to cameras, issues, and various companies. I am glad to hear that Red has great customer service and that they work hard to resolve issues. If they are stating that the latest firmware should resolve this issue it clearly does NOT. Or rather it does not for all DSMC's as my camera is brand new, 512 gb's are brand new, and my batteries are very new (Swiftronix) that put out more amps than required.
 
Chris Angelich said:
Nick, I fully admit to being a "newbie" to Red, but I have shot over 1.3 million feet of 35 mm negative and 600 hours of Arri Alexa footage so I am not a noob in regards to cameras, issues, and various companies. I am glad to hear that Red has great customer service and that they work hard to resolve issues. If they are stating that the latest firmware should resolve this issue it clearly does NOT. Or rather it does not for all DSMC's as my camera is brand new, 512 gb's are brand new, and my batteries are very new (Swiftronix) that put out more amps than required.
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Chris I hear you loud and clear. Lets see what RED says.
 
So it's with a heavy heart I confirm we lost a mag today as well. An entire mag of footage was deleted by a Helium Weapon that was powered down, then powered up.

Today at our studio we hosted the first ever ECLAIR (The East Coast Lens Analysis Involving Redusers)...and felt incredibly privileged to test a range of lenses on SCOTT DEVITT's brand new Helium 8K Weapon (Storm Trooper Limited Edition)!!!

This was supposed to be a joyous day. But as you'll read below, it wasn't.

We also tested the Helium against Dan Kanes' Carbon Weapon, and my Epic Dragon. These latter two camera's performed flawlessly.

The Helium however, corrupted a mag. The entire morning's exposure tests were erased after we powered down the camera for lunch.

We only noticed something was amiss when we returned and powered up the camera.

That's when the now infamous "REFORMAT/UNRECOGNIZED MEDIA" message came up.

I instantly recognized what this was, as I've been monitoring this thread for over 6 months. We pulled the mag, and ran it over to DIT. And, as others have noticed, the card was unreadable, and all the data was gone!! The card showed NO CLIPS. And RCX was unable to read/recognized ANYTHING AT ALL.

We tried Data Rescue 4, and some data was recovered, but none of it was readable in RCX.

We didn't use REDUNDEAD as we didn't want to fundamentally alter the structure or data on the card, as we felt Scott should preserve the mag so he could send it back to RED for testing.

I can't begin to describe how unsettling this data loss was.

So many of us had volunteered to spend a Saturday together to compare lenses and cameras, and instead...we spent a great deal of time worrying/thinking/talking about what this mag issue could be.

It left a pall over the whole day.

It also caused us to run extremely late, as RESHOOTS had to be done that evening (of Helium's DR).

(All I can say is thank God this wasn't a paying gig with a client!)

We also spent the whole day carefully pulling mags out of the Helium, and avoiding ever powering down.

Scott will be sending in a support ticket to RED, so hopefully they can get to the bottom of this.

However I can safely say this is no longer an isolated occurrence.

We finally saw this error with our own eyes!!!

I've been shooting on RED since 2011, and have NEVER seen this issue, certainly not on our MX or Epic Dragon cams.

It was a shock that literally made me feel sick.

I've never lost a single mag ever in 5 years, and we lost one by lunch today.

This is a serious issue and it needs to be looked at.

There were a number of REDUSERS at this test than can attest to seeing this error:

Myself
Dan Kanes
Scott Devitte
Billy Jim

And a tech from a local rental house was there (who was SHOCKED).

The irony is I'd started the day asking Dan and Scott if they've seen this data error; I was curious because we've never noticed it on the old cams, but wanted to know if they'd stumbled on it on their DSMC2 bodies? In fact, every Weapon owner I personally know has NEVER seen this issue (Tom Greenberg, Louis Maddalena, Patrick Kendall).

So...it was almost MORE devastating when this happened to us.

What had simply been a theoretical problem...suddenly became a real one for us today.

I love RED like family...and I really hope they get to the bottom of this.

I've staked so much of my career, time and money on RED....this felt unusually unsettling.

We'll keep everyone posted as we learn more.


Weapon 8K Helium getting tested:



Dan Kanes operating the Storm Trooper 8K


Our mag that went down:


Prepped to go to RED for testing:
 
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So this happened to a Storm trooper that has been rolling for a long time. This means there are no stress test we user can perform to check out the camera for a possibly malfunctioning media problem?
It would be cool if RED could give us some explanations what to avoid and if they have tracked down the problem.

Pat
 
I've had this happen on mag weapon but it was a couple firmwares ago, nothing since...
 
Patrick Tresch said:
So this happened to a Storm trooper that has been rolling for a long time. This means there are no stress test we user can perform to check out the camera for a possibly malfunctioning media problem?
It would be cool if RED could give us some explanations what to avoid and if they have tracked down the problem.

Pat
Click to expand...

Yup Storm Trooper had been rolling off AC power all morning.

Issue only happened after power down/up.
 
Ah, sorry to hear you guys had this failure. Horrible feeling. I had it on two commercial productions and they both pushed us into OT on large-crew shoots. Really feel like a dick when your camera costs a client tens of thousands of dollars.
 
I'm seriously considering putting a laminated set of instructions on my cameras to remind anyone operating it (especially me as I often do things on auto pilot while my mind is otherwise engaged) to go to the menu and eject the media before shutting down. May not need to manually extract the media if it has been ejected via firmware.

Would be helpful if the firmware offered this option when shutting down the camera.
 
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