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Forged Weapon killing mags on power up

So I am a little late to the party but I have been aware of this issue for quite some time now. I want to share my experience albeit different from the original post and see if anyone has experienced something similar.

Let me start by saying I have been an owner/operator/RED tech in NYC for 6 years now. I recieved my EPIC-M in 2011 and I have never had any major issues with it. A few weeks ago I upgraded my now Epic-M Dragon to the latest firmware 6.3.75. I was operating the camera using 1.8" mags 128gb and 256gb, not shooting high speed nor was it too hot on location.

All of the sudden I started seeing LCD tearing on my 5" touch which I didn't think too much about because I have seen this happen before with other cameras and it was a minor firmware issue.

Next my camera stopped recording saying there was an audio buffer error so I power cycled the camera and started recording again. Everything was fine.

A few hours went by and then I got this error:
attachment.php


I got the error twice in a row and the third time when I restarted the camera and pressed record it worked.

I contacted RED the next day, convinced it was a firmware issue. RED gave me a few things to try. Securely formatting the mags had come up but I had already been doing that for a few years. The last major test was to set the camera to 6k and shoot the highest FPS and lowest compression with the sensor test pattern enabled (this is how I continued testing my camera and mags). They thought the issue was SSD related, at this point I was testing on my own 1.8" 128GB mags not with the original mag on set that I had recording issues with.

I recieved several new errors and was never able to recreate the original issue I had on set.

I saw the following:
attachment.php


And eventually one of my mags would consistently record until there was 9 minutes left on it and then get this error:
attachment.php


At this point after sending a few log files RED tells me it's likely a hardware issue and I should send my camera in. While I was waiting for the RMA I started doing more tests this time I decided to see what would happen if I rolled back the firmware. I tried this with a few builds and then on v 6.2.44 I got this error which I had never seen before:
attachment.php


I reformatted the mag and didn't see that error again. I rolled the camera back up to v6.3.75 and continued receiving this Error:0x00000020 with 9 minutes left.

I wound up having to send my camera out to RED. A board went bad within my camera and it was replaced for free even though the camera is out of warranty.

My camera showed up a few days ago I put my mag in that I had labeled "bad" (the one that consistently had errors with 9 minutes left of recording) and it still didn't work.

I immediately call RED to tell them to reopen my RMA. So while I waited I continued to troubleshoot. I rolled my camera back to v5.3.49 (the earliest firmware you can roll back to according to the version 6 release notes). I put my "bad" card in and it worked. I put my other 2 cards in and they both worked. I saved a log file and rolled up to v6.3.75 and my "bad" mag didn't work again. I tested it several times and it kept getting Error:0x00000020. I sent both log files from v5.3.49 and v6.3.75 to RED and they forwarded them to their engineering team. Today while I waited I decided to roll the camera back to v5.3.49 and keep testing. I ran my "bad" mag 3 times in a row and it worked. I ran my other 2 mags and they were fine and then I ran my "bad" mag for a 4th time and it worked. Then when I rolled up to v6.3.75 and the "bad" mag got Error:0x00000020 again.

Pretty consistent, right?

Has anyone else had similar issues with their cameras?

I'm still waiting to hear back from the engineering team.
 
Solomon Schechman said:
Today while I waited I decided to roll the camera back to v5.3.49 and keep testing. I ran my "bad" mag 3 times in a row and it worked. I ran my other 2 mags and they were fine and then I ran my "bad" mag for a 4th time and it worked. Then when I rolled up to v6.3.75 and the "bad" mag got Error:0x00000020 again.

Pretty consistent, right?
Click to expand...

WOW - Solomon, your testing is so methodical, thank you!!

The fact your "bad" mag doesn't work on firmware v6.3.75...but does work on v5.3.49...is fascinating, no?

I know a number of folks on this thread have had "bad" mags as well - I wonder how those mags would fare on v5.3.49?
 
I had a renter mention this SSD warning to me recently. Epic-W, 512 mini mag, latest firmware at the time (early Dec.) He powered down the camera, ejected the mag, and he didn't lose any clips. I guess he was very fortunate.

What is hard to understand is that with this serious media issue across multiple cameras and mags, how have we not heard from Red on this thread in eight months?

Things don't get any more unnerving then this in the camera world!
 
steve green said:
I had a renter mention this SSD warning to me recently. Epic-W, 512 mini mag, latest firmware at the time (early Dec.) He powered down the camera, ejected the mag, and he didn't lose any clips. I guess he was very fortunate.

What is hard to understand is that with this serious media issue across multiple cameras and mags, how have we not heard from Red on this thread in eight months?

Things don't get any more unnerving then this in the camera world!
Click to expand...

First off, everyone knows that REDUSER is not the official path for technical support from RED, right? And while many of us are on here hours each day, we do that on top of our normal jobs, not as a job requirement. This is why we have a tech support team on call 24/7/365. So, to call us out for not replying here, when clearly the affected customers are indeed communicating with RED, that seems pretty unfair.

I will get an updated report from tech support and sustaining engineering. If there is anything meaningful to report, I will.

As I have stated in the past, we have incredibly small support issues related to media. We do months of testing on each mag release before we put them into the wild. But nothing electronic is 100% fail safe. We do everything in our power to make that possibility if a failure as small as possible.
 
Brent@RED said:
First off, everyone knows that REDUSER is not the official path for technical support from RED, right? And while many of us are on here hours each day, we do that on top of our normal jobs, not as a job requirement. This is why we have a tech support team on call 24/7/365. So, to call us out for not replying here, when clearly the affected customers are indeed communicating with RED, that seems pretty unfair.

I will get an updated report from tech support and sustaining engineering. If there is anything meaningful to report, I will.

As I have stated in the past, we have incredibly small support issues related to media. We do months of testing on each mag release before we put them into the wild. But nothing electronic is 100% fail safe. We do everything in our power to make that possibility if a failure as small as possible.
Click to expand...

Brent,

Your time and commitment to this community is truly amazing as is everyone at Red who give their time to educate and inform us. I feel privileged to be a part of it. Please accept my apologies if my post was misplaced or came off snarky, it was not my intention.

I'm not in the loop on what has been communicated to the individuals who have seen and experienced this "SSD Warning", which is random and has catastrophic consequences. Whatever the cause, be it camera, mags, firmware, settings, one of my two cameras has displayed that warning, unfortunately it was on a rental, so no log or ticket was filed. I will look forward to any posts you deem meaningful in trying to isolate and fix the cause of this "gremlin".

Again, please know that the time you choose to spend here is vital to many of our careers and is certainly very appreciated.......
 
Solomon Schechman said:
So I am a little late to the party but I have been aware of this issue for quite some time now. I want to share my experience albeit different from the original post and see if anyone has experienced something similar.

Let me start by saying I have been an owner/operator/RED tech in NYC for 6 years now. I recieved my EPIC-M in 2011 and I have never had any major issues with it. A few weeks ago I upgraded my now Epic-M Dragon to the latest firmware 6.3.75. I was operating the camera using 1.8" mags 128gb and 256gb, not shooting high speed nor was it too hot on location.

All of the sudden I started seeing LCD tearing on my 5" touch which I didn't think too much about because I have seen this happen before with other cameras and it was a minor firmware issue.

Next my camera stopped recording saying there was an audio buffer error so I power cycled the camera and started recording again. Everything was fine.

A few hours went by and then I got this error:
attachment.php


I got the error twice in a row and the third time when I restarted the camera and pressed record it worked.

I contacted RED the next day, convinced it was a firmware issue. RED gave me a few things to try. Securely formatting the mags had come up but I had already been doing that for a few years. The last major test was to set the camera to 6k and shoot the highest FPS and lowest compression with the sensor test pattern enabled (this is how I continued testing my camera and mags). They thought the issue was SSD related, at this point I was testing on my own 1.8" 128GB mags not with the original mag on set that I had recording issues with.

I recieved several new errors and was never able to recreate the original issue I had on set.

I saw the following:
attachment.php


And eventually one of my mags would consistently record until there was 9 minutes left on it and then get this error:
attachment.php


At this point after sending a few log files RED tells me it's likely a hardware issue and I should send my camera in. While I was waiting for the RMA I started doing more tests this time I decided to see what would happen if I rolled back the firmware. I tried this with a few builds and then on v 6.2.44 I got this error which I had never seen before:
attachment.php


I reformatted the mag and didn't see that error again. I rolled the camera back up to v6.3.75 and continued receiving this Error:0x00000020 with 9 minutes left.

I wound up having to send my camera out to RED. A board went bad within my camera and it was replaced for free even though the camera is out of warranty.

My camera showed up a few days ago I put my mag in that I had labeled "bad" (the one that consistently had errors with 9 minutes left of recording) and it still didn't work.

I immediately call RED to tell them to reopen my RMA. So while I waited I continued to troubleshoot. I rolled my camera back to v5.3.49 (the earliest firmware you can roll back to according to the version 6 release notes). I put my "bad" card in and it worked. I put my other 2 cards in and they both worked. I saved a log file and rolled up to v6.3.75 and my "bad" mag didn't work again. I tested it several times and it kept getting Error:0x00000020. I sent both log files from v5.3.49 and v6.3.75 to RED and they forwarded them to their engineering team. Today while I waited I decided to roll the camera back to v5.3.49 and keep testing. I ran my "bad" mag 3 times in a row and it worked. I ran my other 2 mags and they were fine and then I ran my "bad" mag for a 4th time and it worked. Then when I rolled up to v6.3.75 and the "bad" mag got Error:0x00000020 again.

Pretty consistent, right?

Has anyone else had similar issues with their cameras?

I'm still waiting to hear back from the engineering team.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. Hopefully RED is better informed because of your work.
 
After talking to sustaining engineering, a few points.

Well, one main one. This thread has become somewhat of a grab bag. First A happened. OK, now B happened. Oh, now C is happening. A + B + C is big mag problem X! Redmagageddon!

And that is not the case at all.

The very, very first reported issue was addressed in firmware v6.2.51. This actually had nothing to do with media and it was more of an internal timeout camera-side that threw a "Media not formatted" prompt.

The other reports are not related to this. At all. And, as with each tech support issue, we deal with the customer one-on-one to identify the issue and get it resolved. That is the best path for support.

We take each and every support ticket seriously. Our tech support folks have a direct line to engineering. Get the information to them.

While it is certainly human nature to link unrelated things (like, if I wear my lucky shirt and cross my fingers, my team will win) and to draw conclusions form data points that are actually mutually exclusive, you can see how you can go down a rabbit hole pretty quickly.

Lastly, I don't blame folks for freaking out on data integrity. We test the crap out of media because it freaks us out to. If the sky was actually falling, trust me, Jarred would be the first to tell you. He delivers bad news alongside the good.
 
Thanks Brent,

So all these are isolated cases with nothing linking them?

We don't done need to all power cycle with media removed while standing on one leg:)
 
I will let engineering continue to work with people one-on-one, gather data, and get next steps from that. Too soon to comment if standing on one leg has a direct effect : )

I can say the few cases mentioned here also have few people experiencing them. Like, less than you can count on one hand.
 
Brent@RED said:
After talking to sustaining engineering, a few points.

Well, one main one. This thread has become somewhat of a grab bag. First A happened. OK, now B happened. Oh, now C is happening. A + B + C is big mag problem X! Redmagageddon!

And that is not the case at all.

The very, very first reported issue was addressed in firmware v6.2.51. This actually had nothing to do with media and it was more of an internal timeout camera-side that threw a "Media not formatted" prompt.

The other reports are not related to this. At all. And, as with each tech support issue, we deal with the customer one-on-one to identify the issue and get it resolved. That is the best path for support.

We take each and every support ticket seriously. Our tech support folks have a direct line to engineering. Get the information to them.

While it is certainly human nature to link unrelated things (like, if I wear my lucky shirt and cross my fingers, my team will win) and to draw conclusions form data points that are actually mutually exclusive, you can see how you can go down a rabbit hole pretty quickly.

Lastly, I don't blame folks for freaking out on data integrity. We test the crap out of media because it freaks us out to. If the sky was actually falling, trust me, Jarred would be the first to tell you. He delivers bad news alongside the good.
Click to expand...


Brent,
So if I'm understanding your post correctly, the SSD warning "media not formatted...." which created heartache, was corrected with the firmware which was released 12/8/2016? This is crucial to my situation as my camera displayed the warning just before this date on the previous firmware, which if I'm reading the firmware history right is 6.3.38. I would certainly sleep better knowing that the issue is isolated and fixed. I've got an open support ticket I'll need to close if this is confirmed.

DSMC RELEASE BUILD V6.3.57 DECEMBER 8, 2016
You cannot downgrade a WEAPON, EPIC-W, SCARLET-W or RED RAVEN to earlier than v6.2.64 or v6.3.38 after upgrading to v6.3.57.
 
Steve, as I said, the original issue I highlighted was resolved via firmware, yup.
 
Jan Reichle said:
Hello all, I have experienced the dreaded "card not formatted for use in the camera" on the first day with my new Epic-W. It was the 2nd roll and happened on boot up after shifting location. Power shutdown was normal. Card formatted in camera. I have submitted a ticket and uploaded my log file.
I will not power up the camera with media attached for the remaining 2 days of my shoot.
Any advice for the mag that had this issue? How likely is it that the data is gone. FW 6.3.75
Been using RED for many years and never encountered such an issue. Anyone else experienced this recently as this thread has been inactive of late?
Click to expand...

Brent, thanks for replying here yesterday. I want so badly for this issue be rectified and to trust my Epic-W's again. On a shoot yesterday I could not bring myself to boot the camera up with exposed media on a mag. Frightening......What do you make of this post from Jan Reichle in late January on firmware 6.3.75? Same warning, same results, later firmware.
 
Last edited:
Just wondering, how important is it really to boot the camera with a Redmag already inserted?

One thing that I'm trying to get in the habit of doing is booting up the camera without the Redmag, and let it warm up for a few minutes while I go prepare other things for the shoot. When I'm ready to shoot, or after the camera has warmed up a bit, that's when I insert the Redmag. In the context of setting up the entire camera, wouldn't it be a minuscule amount of time that you would save by booting it up with the card inserted?

Also, it's always a good idea to unmount the media before turning off the camera. As an IT guy, I kinda cringe when you turn off the camera with the Redmag inserted and still mounted. It's just like with an external hard drive, or USB thumb drive connected to your computer - you don't want to just yank on the USB cable. You have to unmount or eject it, otherwise you get a warning saying you might lose data. I map the eject function to a simultaneous press of the front 1+2 buttons so it's super easy and brainless.
 
Solomon Schechman said:
So I am a little late to the party but I have been aware of this issue for quite some time now. I want to share my experience albeit different from the original post and see if anyone has experienced something similar.

Let me start by saying I have been an owner/operator/RED tech in NYC for 6 years now. I recieved my EPIC-M in 2011 and I have never had any major issues with it. A few weeks ago I upgraded my now Epic-M Dragon to the latest firmware 6.3.75. I was operating the camera using 1.8" mags 128gb and 256gb, not shooting high speed nor was it too hot on location.

All of the sudden I started seeing LCD tearing on my 5" touch which I didn't think too much about because I have seen this happen before with other cameras and it was a minor firmware issue.

Next my camera stopped recording saying there was an audio buffer error so I power cycled the camera and started recording again. Everything was fine.

A few hours went by and then I got this error:
attachment.php


I got the error twice in a row and the third time when I restarted the camera and pressed record it worked.

I contacted RED the next day, convinced it was a firmware issue. RED gave me a few things to try. Securely formatting the mags had come up but I had already been doing that for a few years. The last major test was to set the camera to 6k and shoot the highest FPS and lowest compression with the sensor test pattern enabled (this is how I continued testing my camera and mags). They thought the issue was SSD related, at this point I was testing on my own 1.8" 128GB mags not with the original mag on set that I had recording issues with.

I recieved several new errors and was never able to recreate the original issue I had on set.

I saw the following:
attachment.php


And eventually one of my mags would consistently record until there was 9 minutes left on it and then get this error:
attachment.php


At this point after sending a few log files RED tells me it's likely a hardware issue and I should send my camera in. While I was waiting for the RMA I started doing more tests this time I decided to see what would happen if I rolled back the firmware. I tried this with a few builds and then on v 6.2.44 I got this error which I had never seen before:
attachment.php


I reformatted the mag and didn't see that error again. I rolled the camera back up to v6.3.75 and continued receiving this Error:0x00000020 with 9 minutes left.

I wound up having to send my camera out to RED. A board went bad within my camera and it was replaced for free even though the camera is out of warranty.

My camera showed up a few days ago I put my mag in that I had labeled "bad" (the one that consistently had errors with 9 minutes left of recording) and it still didn't work.

I immediately call RED to tell them to reopen my RMA. So while I waited I continued to troubleshoot. I rolled my camera back to v5.3.49 (the earliest firmware you can roll back to according to the version 6 release notes). I put my "bad" card in and it worked. I put my other 2 cards in and they both worked. I saved a log file and rolled up to v6.3.75 and my "bad" mag didn't work again. I tested it several times and it kept getting Error:0x00000020. I sent both log files from v5.3.49 and v6.3.75 to RED and they forwarded them to their engineering team. Today while I waited I decided to roll the camera back to v5.3.49 and keep testing. I ran my "bad" mag 3 times in a row and it worked. I ran my other 2 mags and they were fine and then I ran my "bad" mag for a 4th time and it worked. Then when I rolled up to v6.3.75 and the "bad" mag got Error:0x00000020 again.

Pretty consistent, right?

Has anyone else had similar issues with their cameras?

I'm still waiting to hear back from the engineering team.
Click to expand...

UPDATE

Looks like a similar audio buffering issue that affected Solomon (above), occured to Alex too (below).

See here, from another thread:

Alex Kiritz said:
Yeah. My camera has been fucked up since I got a new 960GB card and installed the latest firmware. I get an audio buffer overflow warning sometimes on the new card and a lot of times my camera won't boot. Some times it takes 6 tries before it boots successfully. It's been over a week since I've heard from Red.
Click to expand...

Notice Solomon's issues went away when he rolled back to v5.3.49.

Hopefully RED has some answers as to how to address this too. No one wants to have a camera crashing and rebooting.

And though it's not the dreaded "Not Formatted Correctly" issue, it's still another media concern, and worth mentioning on this thread.

Stay tuned.
 
Last edited:
Brent@RED said:
Steve, as I said, the original issue I highlighted was resolved via firmware, yup.
Click to expand...

Brent, thanks for chiming in on this post, really appreciate it.

As to the firmware update resolving the "Card not formatted for use in the camera" error and mag delete, it looks like Jan Riechle still had this issue, on latest firmware.

Any way you guys could look into this?

Thanks!
 
Nick Morrison said:
Any way you guys could look into this?
Click to expand...

Nick, as I stated before, although the primary and dedicated path of technical support is, well...RED technical support, we are tracking this thread as well. And, yes, every single ticket submitted to us is "looked into" thoroughly.

And, like I said in previous posts, there is no such thing as 100% fail safe. You are simply trying to make the percentage of issues as small as possible. And, not only do we have very strong reported issue percentage with our mags, but our cameras themselves.

I am not going to regurgitate everything I said before, but I will say a handful of issues experienced by a handful of people is absolutely snowballing here. We are working with affected folks directly.

Meanwhile, we are getting folks emailing tech support saying they are afraid to ever power on their camera again. Even going as far to calling bullshit on my replies to this thread. Which I take huge offense to. Our engineers are some of the smartest people on earth. I communicate with them regularly, as I did on this thread - but instead I am out and out liar? Come on, guys. Do you not fly on planes because there was a crash? Do you not drive your car because it might break down? We know your cameras are your livelihood and place the importance on quality control and reported issues that they deserve.

There is no systematic media issue. Our firmware team resolved the one issue that was initially reported here (not a mag issue). We are looking at the cases that are different in this one. If there is a significant update, I will post accordingly. But, please, give us more credit than to think we are ignoring things or that we are covering up Area 51 or something...

PS, Nick, this was a general sentiment. Not directed at you...
 
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