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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 CF Card drop frames

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Randy Che

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So I was on a music video shoot today, the shoot is all green screen "Lock Off" tripod shots, we are shooting 2K redcode 28 since most of the shots are high speed. I choose to use RED 8GB CF card since one of my previous music video shoot I have problems with RED DRIVE, and for some reason it is constently dropping frames "that day". anyway 6 hours in and the shoot was fine, and all of sudden my 1st AC call out to me that we just dropped 143 frames on the shot. It suprised me, since we are running on CF cards which should be free from any frame drop problem. Changed to a different card for the next take, the same thing happens. I use all 4 of my cards and all of them are dropping frames, not 1 or 2 frames but over a couple hundred. I also notice that before it start fropping frames, you can clearly see that the time code getting problems to get pass a certain point, it freeze for a second and the the frame got dropped.

After 8 takes (each take I have about 30sec to a minute before the camera drop frames on me) we switched to a RED Hard drive (the one that I previously have problem with). We survive the rest of the day without any other problems.

Just to add to the story. This is a 2 day music video shoot, and the first day we also run on the same camera, with the same setting, and the same cards. The first day is a 100% steadicam shoot in a club with loud music, and the camera is constently moving. We don't have a single drop frame on the first day. Can anyone from RED explain this problem for me? This is very scary, does my camera needs service? (S/N2014) My partner Norm Li's camera already died on him, and if this is some sort of manufacturing problem please let me know as soon as possible, I can notaffort to go out with a camera that constantly have issues on set. If there is any other people that has the same problem please share your experience and a solution if there is one. Thank you.

Sincerely
R. Che
Cinematographer
604.505.2588
 
I experienced it once as well, using 2k R28 on overcrank to CF cards, could never figure out what it was.
 
Had the same problem of dropped frames on CF cards. Also noticed that POST takes an unusually long time, and in-camera playback takes even longer to start. The AC suggested that the dropped frames seemed to happen on longer shots. I suspect the cards may take too long to close/open files, which could cause dropped frames at the 2 GB limit when the file needs to be closed and a new one opened? Had no time yet for testing this theory.
 
We had this occur a couple times during a series of tests we ran several builds ago. Shooting 8gb cards, rc28, and 113fps we could reliably get dropped frames while pointed at a high detail scene or television while moving a hand or object very fast in front of the camera.
 
I have been finding that the newer Red 8G cards (last 2.5 months) seem to drop frames. The original poster didn't say how high speed they were shooting but I'm at the point where I only trust cards for normal speed shooting.

I'm hoping the new CF modules and 16G cards will fix this.

Have others seen these problems with earlier Red 8G cards, or has it been the newer cards?

What builds? What framerates?
 
Brent J. Craig said:
I have been finding that the newer Red 8G cards (last 2.5 months) seem to drop frames. The original poster didn't say how high speed they were shooting but I'm at the point where I only trust cards for normal speed shooting.

I'm hoping the new CF modules and 16G cards will fix this.

Have others seen these problems with earlier Red 8G cards, or has it been the newer cards?

What builds? What framerates?
Click to expand...

I am having problems wit the new 16gb cards. Green frames on long takes. First thing i did when i got was run 1 long 10 min take, to test. Green frames all in between the 7 - 9 min mark. Need to do more testing but my feeling is it is when there are multiple spanned files.
 
yep. I just received my 16gb cards and new Cf reader.
 
i have found a kind of solution, i discovered that if i play back in camera that the green grames were not there, so it seems it is a problem with the proxies and not the RD3 files. So i re-made the proxies in Redalert and the new proxies do not have the green frames.
 
Bob.H said:
I am having problems wit the new 16gb cards. Green frames on long takes. First thing i did when i got was run 1 long 10 min take, to test. Green frames all in between the 7 - 9 min mark. Need to do more testing but my feeling is it is when there are multiple spanned files.
Click to expand...

I think you're right. I got green screen during playback lasting a second or so on two interviews both lasting about 15 minutes. This was with the RED drive.
 
Sean said:
I inquired on here about the green frames I got, but didn't get much response. Now I see a few others are getting the green frame. I only got it at the very beginning of a take. I posted a picture in the thread here: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25104
Click to expand...

Have you tried what i suggested? ...Open the RD3 files in redalert and make new proxies, the green frames will not be there after, well that's what happened for me anyway.
 
Sean said:
Hm. Well I'm on PC, so no access to RedAlert. But Redcine is opening the R3D file directly, so I can't imagine that new proxies would make a difference.
Click to expand...

Are you seeing the green frames in the RD3 files?
 
Same here yesterday while shooting a detailed scene, with lots of snow falling in front of the lens. I think it simply couldn't write off the amount of data fast enough. We had no problem shooting on the REDdrive afterwards..
 
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