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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 :)

Unusable CF footage from train

S

Simon Baechler

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Hi

A few days ago we shot on a diesel locomotive. All the footage that was recorded to CF was corrupt. There was no dropout indication but you could not play back any of the footage in camera or in Redcine / Redalert.

I assume that strong electrical fields caused the issue. Maybe an iron shield for the CF slot would be a good accessory.

We then switched to the Red drive. When mounted to the camera we still had lots of dropped frames but when I was holding it in my hand it was fine.
 
Is the camera recording fine to CF now or are you still having issues? Could be a faulty CF Module.
 
I was the second cameraman on the shoot. It was very strange.
First we shot with the raid. Then we saw the drop outs so we changed to the CF cards. There we also had problems. So we changed back to the raid but kept it in our hands. Then it was ok.
Maybe our hands protected the raid from an electromagnetic field?
This is a big problem. We encountered the same problem one day before on a carmount.

You can imagine how scared the producer was after that happend. We also lost a lot of time because of that. That kinda stuff could kill the "good image" of the cam.

Tim
 
The reason the raid recorded fine in your hands is because your body was acting like a big shock absorber. I've shot some footage on an old steam locomotive with the raid and its needs a bit of shock absorbtion.

Did you try different CF cards to make sure you didn't have a faulty card?
 
Hi,

There is currently a thread on CLM, problems shooting in a helicopter with CF card & Red drive.

Stephen
 
I would like to get the full story about this shoot (the one reported on cml) to properly diagnose but with all the politicizing of the topic that may never be possible.

It's not clear yet there were problems with CF and there supposedly were REDdrives that were modified to use flash which is a recipe for disaster.
We test tons of different media and I have a huge stack from different vendors that didn't even come close.
 
We've had no problems at all recording on a train; in fact, I'm doing it again over the next two days!

I mounted the RedDrive in a soft pouch tied to the cradle by bungie cord (part of the pouch) and then loosely velcroed to the drive and power cables, creating a setup that absorbs vibrations while not swinging loosely or hitting anything that could disrupt it.

Result - perfect footage, with a single take lasting 53min at 3K 60p. Recorded two takes to the same drive which just fits. Zero dropped frames, clients were ecstatic with the results (yeay for manual iris ramps in tunnels! :) ) and hence I'm doing it again, this time in Fukuoka.

Sorry I don't have footage samples to show but it's for an upcoming train simulator program and I don't have the rights.

Anyway, here's the setup:

visceralpsyche_train_P1010915.jpg


visceralpsyche_train_P1010918.jpg


HTH

Paul
 
The shock mount is basically what we ended up using. Although it is not the perfect solution. The day before we had gunshots and although the camera was on a tripod on the ground there were dropped frames. Maybe from the shockwave.
The big issue here is that the footage on the CF cards was unusable. We tried different cards. All had the same problem. Even the log file is scrambled.
I did not try another camera body. This would have been interesting.
 
Very strange - your AD told me about that shoot (sounds like it was a lot of fun otherwise) and the problems - please keep us updated if you learn something new...
 
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