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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 :)

No More Red Drives

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One positive thing about this hard drive shortage is the fact that the 64GB cards must be super close around the corner. Those are going to be awesome too. 40 minutes of 4k on one card. Goodbye drives. But I agree, it's weird that Red isn't shipping LCDs, EVFs or Drives right now. I would be pissed if I was a new buyer and had to purchase 2nd hand. But then again, I had to wait over a year for my Red to get here!
 
Will these new cards support all the resolutions that the red drives support ? We never use card since they can't handle what we tend to shoot.

Two of our Red Drives have become "unreliable" and this is the first I am hearing that I won't be able to get replacement media as needed.

I'd love to hear more about this as this is a priority concern for our Studio.
 
Fredrik Harreschou said:
We have four R 1´s in feature film productions overlapping and continuously. Hard drives failing all the time. 16GB cards is not an option, it´s a substitute. With repercussions on budgets and goodwill.
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WOW, what are you doing with your drives? In 3 years (w/ 3 cameras and a dozen drives working non-stop) I've only had 2 failures and they were repaired by Red immediatly.
 
Drives

Drives

I have about 30 drives - some drives are tanks and some are butterflies with wings that fall off as soon as there is a strong wind...

1. Dropped Frames with low "G" force
2. Firewire ports dying
3. Drives that record but will not transfer clips (drive stops spinning)
4. The RAID card connector becomes loose and disconnects
5. Dead sectors - drives becomes a paper weight

Red has it's own firmware and testing procedure for their drives and media. Purchasing your own drives and CF cards are not an option. The band aid procedure simply doesn't work.

Camera Assistants don't want to keep exchanging cards every 15 minutes when there is 3 and 1/2 pages of dialogue with Actors who can't get their marks or remember their lines. Drives are preferable to these situations.

Cheers,

Richard
 
Dylan Macleod said:
Totally agreed Stephen.

I own and use two shock mounted drives on a regular basis. It is a great option to have.

I was just speaking to the idea that "old school" film types might balk at a CF cards reliability and was trying to offer a logical argument to that kind of thinking.
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My bad Dylan, I misunderstood. I completely concur and have used the "it's just like shooting film with mags and they are more rugged than hard drives" argument myself .

I've got a couple of ET's iso mounts and they're great, it's a nice option to have.

Cheers!
 
There's not way to spin this into a positive; it's both terrible PR and an unwise business decision. High end gear comes with the expectation that it can be supported for a number of years. Terminating supply of a critical component is disappointing to say the least.

How many of us can honestly say that they would have expected Red to EOL the primary recording medium before a replacement was available? When you bought your Red camera did you have an expectation that such a thing was a possibility? Can you imagine Red adding the disclaimer that the drive would be EOL before replacements are available?

It's my view that the drives should be in continuous production until sufficient quantities of the replacement are available to meet demand.

Am I missing something here?

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
Brent@RED said:
I perfectly understand the desire for an ETA for new media options. And on SCARLET. And etc. But, not my place to spill the beans....
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Brent,
I can understand your position on this, and I can accept that this is the best answer you can give us, so my only aim in posting is in the hopes that you are talking to whoever is responsible for getting new media options ready to ship, or able to authorize the publication of an ETA, and passing along to them that there are folks on REDuser who are really clamoring for it! Thanks!
 
I made a few feature films on only 8 Gig cards. So did a lot of other folks.

16G cards are not too far off from the run time of a 1000ft mag on 35mm.

Funny how the bar raises. Everyone was SO EXCITED when 16G cards shipped.

It's nice to see such demand for RED media.
 
Richard N. Metzker said:
Red has it's own firmware and testing procedure for their drives and media. Purchasing your own drives and CF cards are not an option. The band aid procedure simply doesn't work.

Camera Assistants don't want to keep exchanging cards every 15 minutes when there is 3 and 1/2 pages of dialogue with Actors who can't get their marks or remember their lines. Drives are preferable to these situations.

Cheers,

Richard
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Seriously. The lack of availability of drives is definitely inconvenient - but please tell me why CF cards (which are currently available) are not an option?

As Mark said - we were quite happy with 8GB cards for a long while. In fact I avoided drives. CF cards are way more reliable!

A CF card takes about ten seconds to change. Is that really gonna slow you down?

I think this is a blip.

I think we are on the verge of an announcement.

Even Brent said he is not in a position to "spill the beans" - which means there are beans to spill!

Patience people!
 
Mark L. Pederson said:
I made a few feature films on only 8 Gig cards. So did a lot of other folks.

16G cards are not too far off from the run time of a 1000ft mag on 35mm.

Funny how the bar raises. Everyone was SO EXCITED when 16G cards shipped.

It's nice to see such demand for RED media.
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I agree, I used the 8gig cards a ton and was happy with that, they worked well and it was plenty of space at the time. It was a world where if you wanted true HD, you had Red and cf cards or the hassle of tape.

But that's not this world. This is a world of Drives, 64gig cards (64 gigs on an SSD the size of a postage stamp) and tapeless true competition.

This is also typical red, Now the company has made great strides to do fantastic things with technology, there's no doubt that they have set the bar so high there. The low low, ultra low bar has been set with their delivery of accessories/parts/cameras in a timely manner (not even discussing scarlet/epic) with a reasonable expectation of functionality.

You can't clear your inventory of gear completely before moving to new tech for several reasons.

A) If demand goes up, or delays happen you run out permanently, and it's fiscally poor to get the product remade and restocked. Which is what happened here.

B) Repairs and replacement of equipment. If this thread has demonstrated anything is that there are clear product faults/failures with the drives, but that's the nature of HDD's. At the failure rate (which from what I can gather is like 1.6% from the #'s in this thread) that's a lot of replacement drives to ship out. And it's MUCH much quicker to ship out a new drive and sell refurb, than take the time to fix a drive. You lose a bit of money on product, but probably make it back in man hours.


Where are all the SSD's? There would be far less issues, all around if they were out. Weren't they supposed to be out a long time ago? why aren't they here? SSD's would eliminate all the issues with from gforce and shock, drive wear, etc.
 
Nothing is forever in this exponentially faster moving landscape. How long were the red drives shipping before they were EOL'd? You can probably call 3yrs the average lifespan of any gear these days. 3 years till you wont be able to buy an SSD for an Epic or SSD's seem old hat and 3 years till Red has something even better than even the mighty Epic in the wings. Live by the sword, die by the sword i guess and enjoy the tech while it lasts.

That said its a good idea to have the new version sword ready to go before you stop making swords altogether.
J

–
 
Leo Ticheli said:
Terminating supply of a critical component is disappointing to say the least.

Leo
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I am pretty sure it is "termination" to make room for the next generation.

They aren't going to stop developing.

Do you really think that Red have stopped making media for their cameras?
 
2 Things:

We have to remember in the current climate companies are going under and stopping trading everyday, some of these companies are undoubtedly RED's suppliers which has impacted their stock on a number of items, Jim has hinted at this in the past.

However I think RED should have had a better backup plan and/or larger stock reserves as the backorder issues are something that just dont look good when your ordering on behalf of Production Companies and you have to go back and say well XYZ is not available and well we don't know when it will be. If something is on backorder we should have a date to the day when stock is arriving back at RED, every other company functions in this manner and its one of the things that RED should not overlook as they grow, better stock managment is key to opinion on a company.
 
Drives for rent

Drives for rent

I have Red Rams for rent and Red raids for rent.

Pm me for availability or send an Email to EngDB@live.com

Dave
 
This is just nuts...to discontinue the most preferred recording medium of your ONLY camera system out there with no really acceptable replacement with no answer as to when there will be a replacement! It was bad enough to know you had to wait for a backorder but to know that it's just not being made anymore and there's only CF cards with limited functionality available with short recording times with a 'sorry, but i don't know when there will be anything else'. I'm holding onto my two working drives like babies from here on in, wrapped in cotton wool. The CF card option just isn't acceptable, not fast enough and don't hold enough..don't use them unless i have too and i would guess this is a very common theme for the overwhelming majority of RED One users. My clients that hire my kit from me will just say you have to be kidding...no thanks, i'm going to hire the ALEXA up the road without even flinching. It must be that RED have planned to release their new media within days or this is just bad..bad...and bad again. A repair to a drive from Australia is going to be a 2 week turnaround realistically and what happens if it's destroyed! I'm just shocked with this and what it means. Maybe i'm overreacting but this is just simply not good news...at all. One can handle not having replacement EVF's and LCD's but recording medium! yeah yeah CF cards...if RED release CF cards at 64gb for the same price or less and with full ability fair enough. And besides, i thought that one of the early things about RED was getting third parties involved so customers have choices, options and were not stuck in one direction like other camera makers?

Must say that at the moment it doesn't make me entirely confident about the ability to supply enough accessories to the DSMC line whenever it does happen. RED accessories have been on and off backorder for the Red One cameras entire existence and an announcement like this does not instill confidence of reliable support (in regards to available replacement parts)...especially when your biggest threat and competitor is all about support and reliability of that support. Technical support is one thing but replacing lost, stolen or permanently damaged drives is different.
 
Greg M said:
WOW, what are you doing with your drives? In 3 years (w/ 3 cameras and a dozen drives working non-stop) I've only had 2 failures and they were repaired by Red immediatly.
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We are not doing anything with our drives. Our rental clients are. What is your point exactly? The fact that you haven´t had more than two failures doesn´t really change our situation at all.

We have also done drama production on 8 GB cards. So what?

I just find it plain weird that RED doesn´t have a better solution for all the back ordered accessories. We were until now under the impression that we had drives on back order.
 
Dylan Macleod said:
A CF card takes about ten seconds to change. Is that really gonna slow you down?
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Not necessarily... if you are working with two 16GB cards then you also have to add the time it takes you to offload the data on each card. So working on a job becomes more complex due to needing a second person with laptop to dump the data. Many RED owners are one man operations, furthermore there are some environments where it's not convenient or even possible to offload the data.
 
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