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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 :)

Playback freezes

Jeff Barklage

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Over the past 2 days on different shoots, I occasionally find that the playback freezes midway thru the playback.
The camera then shuts down & reboots itself.
This seems to correct itself BUT half of the time after this self-inflicted reboot, the 5" LCD viewfinder displays only a blue image.
I must then unplug & then re-plug it to the camera body to make it display the correct color palate.
The images on the hard drive seem to be fine.
What is causing this?
I'm on an on-board battery, Red raid drives, on sticks with build 15 [the latest, which has been fine for about a month].
Shooting 4K 2:1 at 23.98fps.
Any thoughts?
Think a simple reload of build 15 would do the trick?
 
Jeff

That's a known issue. Try being gentle when selecting your playback controls ie don't skip, play, skp , pause too quickly etc. It seems that this causes the drive to hang as it tries to keep up.

I find that I skip to clip I want (always waiting for it to display the first frame before skipping again) and then wait a coule of seconds before playing. Having had the same problem again since.


Cheers

Jeff Brown
RED708
 
Any other workarounds? I have the same problem with both my drives, today Ill switch to 13 and see if its a firmware issue, and if it persists I'll connect the drives to another camera. By the way, why isnt this thread on the bugs subforum?
 
From just doing as job with Petros I can say it's not an issue about being gentle with the playback control. All I would do was to press play and it would freeze, 90% of the time.

We were shooting 4K 2:1 redcode 36 on Red raid.

Maybe it's an raid issue? Could someone (Petros) check with CF cards? It was definitely not an issue about redcode 36 (same on 28)

Luckily my cam doesn't have that problem :bleh:


Fredrik Callinggard
 
Hey Fredrik! Nice working with you(giving you my camera actually)
Anyway, its not a 28 or 36 issue, and its only with the drive, not with the cf. Right now I have here the other cam you used and unfortunately the drives that freeze with my camera dont freeze with the other one....
guess Ill have to send my cam to red...
 
I've had this issue in the past, though it seemed to be tied to a particular RED Drive. One of my drives would do this consistently, while the other was generally fine. I had also noticed that the same (faulty) RED drive would hang when trying to copy data off the drive (reading) but never while recording data onto the drive (writing).

I sent the drive back to RED and they sent me a new one. I have not had the problem (playback freezing) since then. I still have other problems, including the blue LCD and some problems with the camera failing to booting in cold-climates. Per RED, I am waiting to send my camera back for inspection.
 
Playback on camera is just asking for trouble. Find another way to view footage on set and problem solved.
 
Playback on camera is just asking for trouble. Find another way to view footage on set and problem solved.

Hahahaha Finner you're always so helpful. Unfortunately this was a 3 cam shoot and there was no means to give that camera any other playback options (such as AJA HD I/O or your prefered Matrox MX02, that sadly occupies the esata serial port)


When in Greece....:sarcasm:


Fredrik Callinggard
 
Hahahaha Finner you're always so helpful. Unfortunately this was a 3 cam shoot and there was no means to give that camera any other playback options (such as AJA HD I/O or your prefered Matrox MX02, that sadly occupies the esata serial port)


When in Greece....:sarcasm:


Fredrik Callinggard

I totally understand Fredrick. Thing is many people are use to working with film or HD tape. With film there is no way to view footage with camera controls and IMO a person is an idiot if they start to rewind and review the tape of an HD camera. So in the end you pretty much need a video playback person. I insist on a vid playback person on any red shoot that wants the ability to review footage. If they do not want to pay for a vid playback person then they do not get to review footage, it's as simple as that. I just tell them that there is no way to watch back footage with the red without the chance of major camera problems. Playing back footage with the red is the equivalent russian roulette with your project. I would under no circumstances do it.
 
playback is a must

playback is a must

Playback on camera is just asking for trouble. Find another way to view footage on set and problem solved.

when you're camera is rigged up and you need to verify the shot quickly to move on or do another take, no one is going to spit out footage and run it over to laptop and view there. it's a huge waste of time and red clearly built playback into the cam so i don't think it's asking too much for it to work. that being said, i've never experienced any playback problems with cf or raid.
 
when you're camera is rigged up and you need to verify the shot quickly to move on or do another take, no one is going to spit out footage and run it over to laptop and view there. it's a huge waste of time and red clearly built playback into the cam so i don't think it's asking too much for it to work. that being said, i've never experienced any playback problems with cf or raid.

When your camera freezes up and you waste a bunch of time getting it back up you look like an idiot on set. It's a problem, don't do it. Get a playback guy, problem solved and you save a ton of production time because people can watch the footage as much as they like without tying up the camera.

I agree with you that it should work but right now it doesn't, so stay away from it. But even when it does work properly a vid playback guy saves a ton of time and money.
 
On at least one Red, this was isolated down to playing back from a hard drive while on battery power.

It worked without a problem on CF with the battery.

It worked without a problem on a Red Drive when plugged in to AC.

All his components worked fine on my camera and my components caused the same problems on his camera- so it is inside his camera.

My guess would be an increased draw on the current that can't be met by the battery when the Red Drive hits some sort of peak demand. Spindles rev up and the actuator arms swing... the batteries can't supply enough current and the camera's OS goes down.

Just what is failing inside the camera will have to be discovered by Red 'cause I ain't opening it up.
 
I've had the playback problem, sans auto reboot and blue screen (just freeze), on the power supply. So I don't think it's voltage.
I agree with Finner. There should always be a playback guy. It's the film BUSINESS, not the film HOBBY. Crew it up right!
But the playback function is useful to quickly check that you actually recorded something. I still do a "tape check" on the HD cameras.
So it's a bummer that this bug exists...
Cheers,
Harry
 
so i don't think it's asking too much for it to work. .
I’ve had my Red for about three weeks now and I find it a terrific camera. However within the first week I had to return it to Red for a swap out of the audio board (which they did at lighting speed) and have had a few mysteries about how and why or why not the camera works myself. I agree with the quote and beyond that if Red says the camera works, then the camera should work. After reviewing the numerous posts about production and postproduction problems Red has at this point I’m a little weary about going into production with the camera right away. I wish Red would post their own “know problems” on this website instead of us having to trip over them while shooting or editing. Having my license as a private pilot I’m not quite prepared to take of in a Red built airplane just yet. Would love some feedback about how comfortable everyone is with the camera and the media it produces at present. .
 
Just experienced the same problem, blue playback. It wasn't consistent - sometimes we'd see it, other times the image was fine. Any word from RED on whether this is a known Build 15 issue or a defect in the camera/media?

We swapped LCD cables and the problem persisted.
 
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