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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 :)

Red 16gb cf problem!

I've had the green frame problem on some clips, and I'm pretty sure (though not 100%) that we were seeing it during in-camera playback, before the footage had been dumped. I'll have to pay more attention in the future.
 
all my in-camera playback has been clean, just the downloaded clips get affected. This is what leads me to belive it's not the camera or CF card module.

That and when I re-download, the clips are fine. Which has to mean that the media on the card is good and the problem happens during the transfer.
 
Sorry if I have over posted... I found this thread which is the most complete example of a situation we are looking at that involved dropped frames. I would like to know if there is a definitive answer to this question, and if the dropped frames are being generated by the transfer of the media to a HD via a card reader, or if they are being created in camera and just copied along the data path.

We have lots of clips on two cards in particular that have these dropped frames (exactly as described and pictured in entry #14 by hoylecd) and I need to know how these happened and how to work around them.

Can we cut around these? Are the whole takes going to be problematic? So far these whole clips seem to crash Redcine when I step through the dropped frames. Out of 15 some cards shot (on 4 actual cards, reformatted and rotated in and out) at least 3 have dropped frames on every clip.

Any guidance is very appreciated.
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
Sorry if I have over posted... I found this thread which is the most complete example of a situation we are looking at that involved dropped frames. I would like to know if there is a definitive answer to this question, and if the dropped frames are being generated by the transfer of the media to a HD via a card reader, or if they are being created in camera and just copied along the data path.

We have lots of clips on two cards in particular that have these dropped frames (exactly as described and pictured in entry #14 by hoylecd) and I need to know how these happened and how to work around them.

Can we cut around these? Are the whole takes going to be problematic? So far these whole clips seem to crash Redcine when I step through the dropped frames. Out of 15 some cards shot (on 4 actual cards, reformatted and rotated in and out) at least 3 have dropped frames on every clip.

Any guidance is very appreciated.
Click to expand...

The #1 problem we hear about is bad firewire cables when copying media from CF to drives. #2 is firewire CF readers going bad. Occasionally a CF module in the camera might go bad due to bent pins, etc.

If you can go back to the original media and copy again, that's the best. If not, the easiest solution is to transcode around the bad frames.
 
Deanan said:
The #1 problem we hear about is bad firewire cables when copying media from CF to drives. #2 is firewire CF readers going bad. Occasionally a CF module in the camera might go bad due to bent pins, etc.

If you can go back to the original media and copy again, that's the best. If not, the easiest solution is to transcode around the bad frames.
Click to expand...

Deanan, thanks for the reply. The cards were rotated in and out on set... there is no media left on the cards, everything was copied to hard drives via card readers, then the cards were reformatted and shot on again. We are left with what was transferred.

We see the biggest issues on rolls 002, 012, and 013. There were only 4 physical cards that were continuously reformatted. So, it's not across the board, just on some rolls. Is this bad card media perhaps? Or.. as you suggested, is this either a bad reader or cable? Reading where others suggested rotating card readers, is this something that RED officially subscribes to?

**EDIT** If it was a bad Card unit in the RED, would error codes have appeared in the viewfinder?

Is there no way to "check sum" the data that has been transferred off the cards to police if there are dropped frames, rather than playing all the footage back in real time? Scrubbing the shots will not necessarily reveal dropped frames unless you happen to hit them.

We have never seen these issues on regular Red Drives. Based on what I have seen so far, transcoding around these frames is going to be less than fun, to put it mildly.

Thanks in advance again for your thoughts.
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
Deanan, thanks for the reply. The cards were rotated in and out on set... there is no media left on the cards, everything was copied to hard drives via card readers, then the cards were reformatted and shot on again. We are left with what was transferred.

We see the biggest issues on rolls 002, 012, and 013. There were only 4 physical cards that were continuously reformatted. So, it's not across the board, just on some rolls. Is this bad card media perhaps? Or.. as you suggested, is this either a bad reader or cable? Reading where others suggested rotating card readers, is this something that RED officially subscribes to?

**EDIT** If it was a bad Card unit in the RED, would error codes have appeared in the viewfinder?

Is there no way to "check sum" the data that has been transferred off the cards to police if there are dropped frames, rather than playing all the footage back in real time? Scrubbing the shots will not necessarily reveal dropped frames unless you happen to hit them.

We have never seen these issues on regular Red Drives. Based on what I have seen so far, transcoding around these frames is going to be less than fun, to put it mildly.

Thanks in advance again for your thoughts.
Click to expand...

It's possible the cards may be damaged but we've seen this very rarely. It's most likely a bad card. Generally I recommend doing two copies through two separate paths (reader,cable,computer) before recycling media. Doing a checksum (or md5, etc) on each path usually exposes a problem right away.

If the frame were being dropped on the camera side, the drop frame indicator on the monitor would show that.
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
Is there no way to "check sum" the data that has been transferred off the cards to police if there are dropped frames, rather than playing all the footage back in real time? Scrubbing the shots will not necessarily reveal dropped frames unless you happen to hit them.
Click to expand...

R3D Data Manager does exactly that. It does a checksum of the data from the CF card, then verifies that each copy is an exact duplicate. You'll notice from the first post that when the program reported errors it was the first indication that something when wrong.

But regardless of if all the checksums always match, you will always need to verify that the data is valid image data. Even if you only do finder copies, you'll need to verify that all the zeros and ones align perfectly to form an image. The benefit to using R3D Data Manager is that you only need to verify once because the checksums should always match. With other methods you would need to re-verify each copy.
 
R3D Data said:
R3D Data Manager does exactly that. It does a checksum of the data from the CF card, then verifies that each copy is an exact duplicate. You'll notice from the first post that when the program reported errors it was the first indication that something when wrong.

But regardless of if all the checksums always match, you will always need to verify that the data is valid image data. Even if you only do finder copies, you'll need to verify that all the zeros and ones align perfectly to form an image. The benefit to using R3D Data Manager is that you only need to verify once because the checksums should always match. With other methods you would need to re-verify each copy.
Click to expand...

Conrad, this is great. I will delve deeper into this software, not familiar with it. I think we need to mandate that our media is always check-summed by the data wrangler from here on out, in case these kinds of technical issues arise. The current on set workflow in question wasn't redundant enough so it seems.

Thanks for weighing in. Thanks again Deanan for your speedy answers.
 
This is exactly why just dragging and dropping the data from the media is BAD BAD BAD. You need to checksum the data. My preference is for SHA-1 checksum.

If you don't know how to do that from the command line you can use 3CP or R3D Data manager. 3CP would be my choice as it has a host of other features including CDL support.

If you don't verify the copy then all bets are off. Once the original media is gone you're well and truly f#@&ed.
 
Hi, Since this is my first post I want to start by thanking the RED team for designing, building and supporting such great products!

Ok, now to the matter at hand.

I just finished being the Digital Loader for a feature film. I downloaded 450 16gb cards in 25 days (Most days only 2 REDs were being used except for 2 days where a 3rd one was added). I worked in hot and humid conditions. Most of the times inside the camera truck with decent but not great AirCond. at times. A few times I worked on location inside an apartment with just a fan on, other times inside my suv and the last few weeks inside a nice trailer with very cold air cond.

The first few days I had many many problems with the mentioned "dropped frame issue". Green "digital artifacts" showed up in several frames of many clips. I had to download whole cards (we were using 4 16gb RED CF cards per camera) a few times just to get all clips right. It was a pain. I was using a single delkin card reader. I tried to use R3D DM software but it got too slow which in turn got the cards even hotter.

HEAT. That was the main issue! CF cards do not like heat. Once I got control of the heat (I even held up the cards against the vents of the ac to cool them! at times), download issues were minimized to almost nothing. I then started using the R3D DM software with great success. I also switched to the Lexar Prof. FW800 readers which are great but one still needs to keep them cool.

Also, I had to sometimes eject a card and reconnect the reader to another fw800 port on the mac pro. For some reason, seemingly at random, transfer speeds slowed down dramatically and I got the infamous "drop frames" in clips after they finished, of course the R3D DM software warned me with a "bad copy"! But with the camera assistants wanting their cards back to keep shooting time was a luxury I did not have so I had to keep things moving. Once I learned to quickly spot a slowish copy from the card, I just cancelled it, ejected the card, reconnected the reader, plugged the card in, started the copy and then all was good.

But man, once I was working in a cool space I had almost zero issues. I really only had the fw800 issue maybe 4 times a week.

Producers should be aware of the heat issue and plan accordingly since the footage and the production can be compromised. I dont want them to blame the RED since I proved that the cards and the cameras were fine. (I kept a log of everything)

notes:
The heat "issue" happened on a MacBookPro setup when copying to an external fw800 drive and to the internal drive and on a MacPro, again to external fw800 drives, eSata drives and internal drives. The common issue was the heat. Also, fw800 connectors (both on cables and on computer) are really not built for lots of plug/unplug cycles so they are definitely a weak link that must be constantly checked.

Possible solutions? A higher quality external fw800 reader with heat sink and fan to keep things cool or better yet a eSATA card reader with the same features.

I also told the assistants to switch to the RED drives if shooting long scenes as long as the cameras were not going to be subjected to vibrations.

thanks again and Happy Holidays!

Ken
 
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K.Rexach said:
Hi, Since this is my first post I want to start by thanking the RED team for designing, building and supporting such great products!

Ok, now to the matter at hand.

I just finished being the Digital Loader for a feature film. I downloaded 450 16gb cards in 25 days (Most days only 2 REDs were being used except for 2 days where a 3rd one was added). I worked in hot and humid conditions. Most of the times inside the camera truck with decent but not great AirCond. at times. A few times I worked on location inside an apartment with just a fan on, other times inside my suv and the last few weeks inside a nice trailer with very cold air cond.

The first few days I had many many problems with the mentioned "dropped frame issue". Green "digital artifacts" showed up in several frames of many clips. I had to download whole cards (we were using 4 16gb RED CF cards per camera) a few times just to get all clips right. It was a pain. I was using a single delkin card reader. I tried to use R3D DM software but it got too slow which in turn got the cards even hotter.

HEAT. That was the main issue! CF cards do not like heat. Once I got control of the heat (I even held up the cards against the vents of the ac to cool them! at times), download issues were minimized to almost nothing. I then started using the R3D DM software with great success. I also switched to the Lexar Prof. FW800 readers which are great but one still needs to keep them cool.

Also, I had to sometimes eject a card and reconnect the reader to another fw800 port on the mac pro. For some reason, seemingly at random, transfer speeds slowed down dramatically and I got the infamous "drop frames" in clips after they finished, of course the R3D DM software warned me with a "bad copy"! But with the camera assistants wanting their cards back to keep shooting time was a luxury I did not have so I had to keep things moving. Once I learned to quickly spot a slowish copy from the card, I just cancelled it, ejected the card, reconnected the reader, plugged the card in, started the copy and then all was good.

But man, once I was working in a cool space I had almost zero issues. I really only had the fw800 issue maybe 4 times a week.

Producers should be aware of the heat issue and plan accordingly since the footage and the production can be compromised. I dont want them to blame the RED since I proved that the cards and the cameras were fine. (I kept a log of everything)

notes:
The heat "issue" happened on a MacBookPro setup when copying to an external fw800 drive and to the internal drive and on a MacPro, again to external fw800 drives, eSata drives and internal drives. The common issue was the heat. Also, fw800 connectors (both on cables and on computer) are really not built for lots of plug/unplug cycles so they are definitely a weak link that must be constantly checked.

Possible solutions? A higher quality external fw800 reader with heat sink and fan to keep things cool or better yet a eSATA card reader with the same features.

I also told the assistants to switch to the RED drives if shooting long scenes as long as the cameras were not going to be subjected to vibrations.

thanks again and Happy Holidays!

Ken
Click to expand...

Were you doing checksums on the data as you copied it?
 
Thanks for the detailed report. The number one issue we see with problem footage comes from bad firewire cables.

#2 is bad firewire ports on readers
#3 is bad firewire readers (heat is pushes marginal readers over the edge faster)
#4 bent pins on the camera's CF module

The 16GB cards are built to take alot of heat but they also put out more heat because they're built to be very fast (102MB/s read speeds). Because they put out more heat and stress the readers more because they're faster, cooling them reduced the heat stress on the reader.


I
 
I had some problems recently with corrupt files. I'm still trying to understand exactly what happened. As part of that process I hired somebody for a couple of days to try and recreate the problem.

INTERESTINGLY you can put a 16gb CF card into a Lexar 800 reader so that the OS thinks its OK and you can copy all the files off BUT many will be corrupt. I can repeat this with 3 readers (all I have at the moment).

Does this simply means CF is a no go for some situations..?? Seams so!

kind regards

Michael L

PS I'll try and recreate again with the Sandisk 800 tomorrow. And using checksums (r3d manager)
 
Michael Lindsay said:
I had some problems recently with corrupt files. I'm still trying to understand exactly what happened. As part of that process I hired somebody for a couple of days to try and recreate the problem.

INTERESTINGLY you can put a 16gb CF card into a Lexar 800 reader so that the OS thinks its OK and you can copy all the files off BUT many will be corrupt. I can repeat this with 3 readers (all I have at the moment).

Does this simply means CF is a no go for some situations..?? Seams so!

kind regards

Michael L

PS I'll try and recreate again with the Sandisk 800 tomorrow. And using checksums (r3d manager)
Click to expand...

Replied to your email before I saw this...

There's something causing problems in your setup or possibly a faulty batch of readers but am curious as to what other info you get from testing.
 
To control heat, a simple solution is to keep CF readers on one of those laptop cooling pads. The fans should do a decent job of keeping the heat minimized.

If that doesn't solve it, then start checking cables and ports. Use quality cables when possible.
 
Hi, Whenever I used R3D DM I had it to automatically perform the "fast" checksums.

I tried 3 different readers, each with a different cable (2 delkin fw800's and one lexar prof. fw800). All gave me issues at some point whenever the card / reader got hot. I tell you, cards can get REALLY hot. Maybe in dryer / cooler weather it isnt that bad but here in the tropics it can be a problem. The local assistants and operators know this and really try to keep the REDs cool as much as possible by turning them off whenever possible, having the fans setup on high and not encasing the cameras inside rain covers for extended periods of time (they use cheap custom made "poncho" style covers that are wide open at the bottom to allow ventilation). In this particular job we didnt loose any data and the cameras only gave errors like 2-3 times total which is nothing.

A fan helps but the best solution is to have the digital loading station in an air conditioned space (Even my SUV worked great for that purpose) since the drives get hot too but I have yet to see one give me issues due to the heat, unlike the cards / readers. At least that is what worked for me.

I would love to have higher quality eSata readers (plug is better than the fw800) or better yet one with a R2E LEMO connector (I can use my LEMO to eSata cable) but also w/ the usual usb2 and fw800 just in case.

I guess only the RED camera takes CF cards to the very limit where issues like what I experienced arise so there isnt a huge demand for better CF card readers. I have yet to meet a DSLR user that needed to download 100 gigs from CF cards in a few hours, format the cards and use them again right away. (I had several 230 gig days and one 275)

We at our office tried to order the Qio but it wasnt available.
 
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I have to say this is a very frustrating thread. I'm looking at buying CF media for some of my work (I've always used RED drives) and this is giving me pause. Would you guys PLEASE BE SPECIFIC about solutions that WORK. That includes cables.

I don't want anyone to disparage any company, but if Deanan or Jarred or Brent could give brands and model numbers of readers that we can expect to work with RED 16 G CF cards, that would be genuinely helpful. The RED Station is not yet available, and I don't want to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a recording solution that just causes me trouble.
 
D Fuller said:
I have to say this is a very frustrating thread. I'm looking at buying CF media for some of my work (I've always used RED drives) and this is giving me pause. Would you guys PLEASE BE SPECIFIC about solutions that WORK. That includes cables.

I don't want anyone to disparage any company, but if Deanan or Jarred or Brent could give brands and model numbers of readers that we can expect to work with RED 16 G CF cards, that would be genuinely helpful. The RED Station is not yet available, and I don't want to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a recording solution that just causes me trouble.
Click to expand...

The cards themselves and also the cameras are extremely reliable. The main issue was when downloading the data from the cards.

For that I do not think there is a 100% reliable solution in all situations that one can trust it without a person checking it and performing backups (there rarely is for anything).

However, to minimize any issues, I would get the lexar RW034-001 (Professional UDMA fw800 CF reader), fix the cable both on the reader and the computer with a bit of gaffer tape, keep things cool and use R3D DM. Also, on the second (backup) download, eject card, insert and copy again to a separate drive (or better yet another computer or external drive), yo can do that without using R3D DM to save time.
 
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