Forged Weapon killing mags on power up

[PatrickFaith]

I really wished RED had a formal alpha/beta/production approach. I'd have all alpha & beta cameras write a log on every startup and shutdown, and have that a requirement to be sent in to RED. Also the first 200 cameras would be alpha/beta, and RED would not announce full production till they had completed beta testing. Another thing is knowing your camera was alpha/beta would temper people's thoughts on problems and sending the camera in (i.e. Assume you will need to send the camera back to RED two or three times if your in the alpha/beta). I would have probably put all the white heliums and the forged cameras as alpha and the nab woven as beta, with VV still in alpha. People should expect this type of problems (the time code problem is another example), in pre production cameras ... But for some reason RED fights this approach then renters (and people that have leveraged themselves on wee hour purchases) freak out when they have problems on the early release gear. I think A level productions have manufacturing staff on location for early release gear, kind of expect thus and have backups equipment of everything, so they have a process for these problems that smaller productions don't have.

 

[Elsie N]

I really wished RED had a formal alpha/beta/production approach. I'd have all alpha & beta cameras write a log on every startup and shutdown, and have that a requirement to be sent in to RED. Also the first 200 cameras would be alpha/beta, and RED would not announce full production till they had completed beta testing. Another thing is knowing your camera was alpha/beta would temper people's thoughts on problems and sending the camera in (i.e. Assume you will need to send the camera back to RED two or three times if your in the alpha/beta). I would have probably put all the white heliums and the forged cameras as alpha and the nab woven as beta, with VV still in alpha. People should expect this type of problems (the time code problem is another example), in pre production cameras ... But for some reason RED fights this approach then renters (and people that have leveraged themselves on wee hour purchases) freak out when they have problems on the early release gear. I think A level productions have manufacturing staff on location for early release gear, kind of expect thus and have backups equipment of everything, so they have a process for these problems that smaller productions don't have.

I dunno Patrick... I think I'd rather take my chances on not getting a citrus camera '-) rather than wait for an alpha/beta program to complete. Come to think of it, I believe they already do beta testing through a few trusted operators.

Maybe that's the problem with VV... maybe it is stuck in Groundhog Day beta. '-)

 

[Nick Morrison]

UPDATE #1:

This was a question posed by Reuben on another thread.

Did you try booting up the camera on without the media, and then inserting the media to see if it would read? This process worked for me when I saw the issue.

And here is the answer from Scott Devitte, owner of the Helium 8K that lost media yesterday after a power down/up

Just tried it, camera says:

"Media Format

The media in the side ssd is not formatted correctly to work with this camera...."

So lost clips are not currently reviewable in camera, or in RCX.


Also, Scott says his Helium 8K is on the latest firmware: 6.3.27

 

[Tom Hamilton]

This is very vexing. Nick, so sorry to hear of your troubles.

One thing when highly sophisticated electronics and imaging components are subject to pitching seas and stormy, salty breezes, we go to greatest lengths to protect the equipment as best we can. The Epics have been troopers in this regard, what an amazingly robust, solid little camera, never let us down, not once. Ever. Images in the can, money in the bank, ecstatic in the clients, a happy place to be.

Entirely another beast when random stuff happens in controlled studio conditions, accomplished pros at the con, connected to reliable AC mains.

I have every confidence that the Red team will throw all of their resources at this problem, past experience has shown that to be the case. But until then, we are delaying upgrade to Weapon and beyond until the issue has been positively identified, and permanently fixed.

 

[Nick Morrison]

This is very vexing. Nick, so sorry to hear of your troubles.

One thing when highly sophisticated electronics and imaging components are subject to pitching seas and stormy, salty breezes, we go to greatest lengths to protect the equipment as best we can. The Epics have been troopers in this regard, what an amazingly robust, solid little camera, never let us down, not once. Ever. Images in the can, money in the bank, ecstatic in the clients, a happy place to be.

Entirely another beast when random stuff happens in controlled studio conditions, accomplished pros at the con, connected to reliable AC mains.

I have every confidence that the Red team will throw all of their resources at this problem, past experience has shown that to be the case. But until then, we are delaying upgrade to Weapon and beyond until the issue has been positively identified, and permanently fixed.

Tom, totally agree with you. The Epic Dragons have been incredibly robust. I have absolute faith RED will solve this. Thanks for checling in!

best

 

[Joel Voelker]

It is very odd that this is a problem that had never been heard of in the RED world until DSMC2. So it's definitely something in the new setup. Interesting they haven't been able to stamp it out.

 

[Nick Morrison]

It is very odd that this is a problem that had never been heard of in the RED world until DSMC2. So it's definitely something in the new setup. Interesting they haven't been able to stamp it out.

I believe one person on this thread mentioned seeing it on their Epic Dragon (latest firmware) right before upgrading to Weapon.

Not sure if that suggests it's firmware related or not...have no idea.

Also worth noting no one with Scarlet-W or Raven have come forward yet. Not sure if that's more todo with fewer numbers of those cams in the wild, or due to an engineering difference (ie do the lighter internal boards make a difference? No idea).

Again, until RED weighs in, it's hard to understand what's at the root of this.

But yes...seems like a product more of recent DSMC2 tech/software, than of the DSMC1 variety...

 

[Nick Morrison]

Just wanted to let everyone know RED has reached out to Scott and myself, and have been incredibly responsive.

Scott is in process of sending in his MAG and log files!

best

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

I think there's something funny in the latest release build, I rolled mine back one version because my weapon would not stay powered on more than a minute no matter what. Red found no errors in the log, I rolled back and everything's fine. I've heard of A LOT of weird stuff happening with the latest release build so I'd recommend getting off it

 

[Billy Jim]

Just wanted to let everyone know RED has reached out to Scott and myself, and have been incredibly responsive

Scott is in process of sending in his MAG and log files!

best

Great to meet you, Nick.
Thank you for update.

 

[Neil Dearman]

Phil how does 8K do on varispeed, most of my clients like using 48fps how long do the cards last opposed to 23.98fps?

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil how does 8K do on varispeed, most of my clients like using 48fps how long do the cards last opposed to 23.98fps?

At 8K FF 48fps on a 1TB you get about an hour with REDCODE RAW 10:1. Actually a bit over an hour if I recall correctly.

 

[Chris Angelich]

Nick,

Truly sorry to hear that like quite a few of us, you experienced the dreaded "The card is not formatted for use in this camera" even after formatting the card (in camera) correctly and shooting with the media for many many clips. As you are aware I had the same occurrence with my brand new Weapon. I sent the camera in (via Red Store Hollywood) and the folks at Red were understanding and 'nice' and after testing my 3 day old Weapon just sent me a new Brain. I will be testing the camera next week with every type of power on/off, media in/out etc etc to see if this Weapon has the same unfortunate catastrophe.

After reading your thread, my thread and other user's chiming in......the issue cannot be caused my media (or rather its doubtbul that it could be this many mini mags) but rather a bad marriage between the powering up/down and the latest firmware. RED has now received enough log files, cameras and media that it should release some sort of statement.

There is NOTHING more frustrating that wondering after each shot, "IF" we will lose even one clip much less a day's work. It cost me over $11,000 in re-shoots when I lost over 400GB's of data. I'm very apprehensive at this point.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Here's a recent "Side SSD is not formatted correctly" issue on an Epic Dragon running latest firmware, on a 240 mag:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...ormat-failed&p=1685580&viewfull=1#post1685580

I've asked Willem to keep us posted on what's happening to him.

Worth noting the error message listed in that thread:

"The media in the Side SSD is not formatted correctly to work with this camera. Do you want to re-format it now?

Is exactly what we got when the Stormtrooper Helium booted up and deleted our 512 mag.

This is a reminder that this "Side SSD is not formatted correctly" behavior is def NOT isolated to DSMC2, but is also happening to DSMC1...

Whether this is firmware related is unclear, as that is something that RED would have to confirm.

Just keeping you all posted.

 

[Nick Morrison]

PS an update on this, a month later.

As of last we talked, I don't believe Scott had been told anything conclusive about why his mag got delated. RED was still testing.

However, if I remember correctly RED did send him a new replacement mag though, which was nice of them.

If I hear anything else, I'll let everyone know.

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:

 

[Willem Berents]

hi all,
Having a similar issue with Epic Dragon, 1.8" 240 gb mag. Nick found my post on another thread. I decided to copy and past it here, including my reply to several questions. Hope it helps.

Willem, your format issue is similar to what happened to us last month when a Stormtrooper Helium booted up, deleted a mag, and came up with the same error message mentioned in this thread:

"The media in the Side SSD is not formatted correctly to work with this camera. Do you want to re-format it now?

We were unlucky, and half a day's shooting got lost when we saw this prompt (even though we DID NOT format, and rushed the mag to our DIT, we weren't able to "see" or copy over any of our clips, they were gone).

Have you lost any media?

Or are you just unable to format and reuse your cards?

Keep us posted, as your issue is perhaps related to ours.

I'll add what's happening to you to our thread, to keep the conversation going.

thanks!

--reply--
I have not lost any footage. I copied it the previous day. Nothing was wrong then! While shooting the next day, I changed cards and the "format-failure" poped up. Since then this specific mag will not format. The others work fine.
My camera showed 22% free space on the 240 gb card. I could still view all files, but when I inserted the card in the redmag I got the same message that you got. The card was not formated correctly for this camera.
This morning I decided to update firmware to the latest version (6.3.47) and tried to format the card. Still the same message... Nothing worked. Regular format, secure format... Again my camera shows 22 % free space, but when trying to look at the clips, the camera gave the message that there were no clips.
At the moment I do not use this specific card, and will try to format it anyhow. I am a little worried about my other Cards. Hope they will be okay. I am working on a tight schedule and on "remote" islands. Can not have an other card going crazy.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I have not lost any footage. I copied it the previous day.

Fair enough. But if you HADN'T backed up your footage, the media would be lost now, right?

Meaning, the mag no longer currently works, correct? Are there any clips visible/readable on it?

Since then this specific mag will not format. The others work fine.

What other mags do you have? Are they also 240's?


My advice right now would be to PULL your cards when you power down and power up. I have no idea why, but that seems a common theme in a lot of these mag issues. A camera is turned on with a mag inside, and then this screen comes up (effectively wiping out the mag):

That's certainly what happened to us with Scott Devitte's Stormtrooper Helium....

 

[Elsie N]

Something similar to the card problem happened with a RAVEN. I was mounting a new XL battery for charging and the first message I got was something like "This battery is not compatible with this camera." I dismounted and remounted the battery and it worked fine and charged to 100%. I had the wall power on at the time.

The next battery I just left the wall power off and mounted it. It showed 20 odd percent charged and when I then plugged in the wall power, it charged to 100% as well.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Something similar to the card problem happened with a RAVEN. I was mounting a new XL battery for charging and the first message I got was something like "This battery is not compatible with this camera." I dismounted and remounted the battery and it worked fine and charged to 100%. I had the wall power on at the time.

The next battery I just left the wall power off and mounted it. It showed 20 odd percent charged and when I then plugged in the wall power, it charged to 100% as well.

I had a renter report this as well few weeks ago with a V-Mount brick. I doubt though it's related.

 

[Dan Kanes]

Throwing stuff at the wall theory... Camera decides to update Mag's Firmware during Boot cycle effectively corrupting "boot Sector" or File Allocation Table of Drive?