Scarlet Monitor Lock-Out Bug

[Gabriel Gettman]

Today we were doing a prep day on location for shoot tomorrow with our new Scarlet. In trying to connect the camera via SDI to a Panasonic field monitor, the Scarlet entered a strange mode, by which none of the menus were visible on the Touch LCD, and the menus could not seemingly be brought back by any means.

The camera still monitored, the user-defined function buttons still worked and it seemingly still recorded with the record button. However, all other functions were restricted, as we do not yet have our side handle or Redmote, and all operation beyond record should therefore be controlled by the LCD.

Restarting made no difference. RED Europe and an expert I called could only suggest reloading the firmware, which I will attempt now in an effort to return the camera to normal operation.

I wondered if anyone had experienced this on either the Scarlet or Epic, and if anyone had found a solution to return to normal operation without reloading the firmware.

Thanks!

 

[Glen Powell]

Is there a little 'Lock' icon in the top right hand corner of the monitor? If so press and hold it down - it should then change to a 'Menu' icon. From there it should be ok; it happened to me on the second day and took forever to find a solution in the manual.

Or you could be experiencing something completely different, in which case I probably wasn't much help.

 

[Gabriel Gettman]

Several people suggested there might be a lock on the screen. But there was literally nothing other than the image. Holding the top right hand corner made no difference.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Yoav Yerushalmi]

Today we were doing a prep day on location for shoot tomorrow with our new Scarlet. In trying to connect the camera via SDI to a Panasonic field monitor, the Scarlet entered a strange mode, by which none of the menus were visible on the Touch LCD, and the menus could not seemingly be brought back by any means.

The camera still monitored, the user-defined function buttons still worked and it seemingly still recorded with the record button. However, all other functions were restricted, as we do not yet have our side handle or Redmote, and all operation beyond record should therefore be controlled by the LCD.

Restarting made no difference. RED Europe and an expert I called could only suggest reloading the firmware, which I will attempt now in an effort to return the camera to normal operation.

I wondered if anyone had experienced this on either the Scarlet or Epic, and if anyone had found a solution to return to normal operation without reloading the firmware.

Thanks!

I managed to stupidly enter "Preview" mode on my monitor by using the menus to navigate to the monitor options and selecting this. It left me with what it sounds like you're describing (just the picture, no menus, and a little crosshair in the middle). Powering didn't do anything.. I somehow magically got out of it, but can't remember how. I think I may have double tapped the crosshair, or left it pressed for a bit, or maybe tried something in the top line (I tried all the corners etc too.. I just don't remember how I got out of it, but I did..)

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

I recall reading in the manual that double tapping the touch screen would switch the view back to menu surround view from preview-only... but its possible this is related to a different issue entirely.

 

[Kevin Wild]

We have had several of these bugs, too. I had posted about the locked monitor issue and someone said holding it down would unlock it. Not always. Last night, I had the lock and tried and tried to unlock it. In the end, I don't even know what I did, but wiggling the cable suddenly unlocked it. This is a little scary to me because it is not a repeatable solution. Luckily, I was not on a shoot. I hope RED can chime in that some of these are known issues and will be fixed soon.

 

[Andre W.]

if you are in the preview mode (only frame lines shown, no menu's) a double tap would bring back the menus. However if you have a screen protector on, I've noticed that it won't recognize the double tap. So you would need to remove the screen protector, and it's a fast double tap from what I've done.

 

[Gabriel Gettman]

I found the problem. Basically when you're in 'Preview' or 'Clean Feed' mode on the LCD, it can be very difficult to get the camera to respond to the double-tap. If you've already touched the LCD several times before you try the double-tap, it seems to become impossible -- I guess this is a bug.

I have now enabled one of the user-config hardware buttons to toggle monitor modes, so hopefully I'll never get stuck in 'clean-feed' limbo again.

 

[Justin Talley]

That sounds scary as hell. Thanks for the info!