What more would you like out of the REDlink?

[Jonathan Petts]

Hello All!

The REDlink has been out for quite a while now and we have seen some fantastic apps coming out for it and seen some great uses for the REDlink.

But I thought I would start a thread to see what people would think would make this device even more useful and amazing - and I havent seen many requests threads on here so thought why not!!!


I have a few that I would like to put forward as things that would make life on set a lot easier -

1) Access to the meta data - Having access to the meta data could enable DIT or continuity to plug in information about the shot into the last file that was shot. Such as if it was a good take - notes about the files for the editor. This is something I would love to have on-set as I already use various app on my iPad to log notes about shots etc. But if we could have access to the Meta Data to makes notes about shots and other bits of info such as Camera height, I think it could be a fantastic tool.
You could even have people developing little tools for the sound team who can make takes for sound by using a point that I made below about multiple connections.

I got this idea form using FoolCat when making camera report sheets but to edit a lot of the meta data you need to open it in RedCine-X so it wold be great to be able to skip this step and do it on set/ on camera.

2) Possibly not in this version of RedLink but the ability to enable more than one device to connect so you could have the AC only have access to camera settings, Director has access to Playback and DoP to both possibly all from multiple devices. Numerous time after a shot the iPad or iPhone has to get passed around to various people from Director to play through a shot to DoP to do settings and then back to AC to focus pull (on a Ronin).



These are just some of my early idea's that I think would make the RedLink even more perfect for use on set!

So what Idea's do you have?

Jonny

 

[Trent Lillehaugen]

2) Possibly not in this version of RedLink but the ability to enable more than one device to connect so you could have the AC only have access to camera settings, Director has access to Playback and DoP to both possibly all from multiple devices. Numerous time after a shot the iPad or iPhone has to get passed around to various people from Director to play through a shot to DoP to do settings and then back to AC to focus pull (on a Ronin).

This is only a limitation of the current serial to WiFi products (i.e. REDLINK BRIDGE and, I would assume, OFFHOLLYWOOD's HOTLINK and HOTBOX). The camera currently supports multiple connections (up to 8 concurrent connections over Ethernet). Of course, this means you would need to use a GigE to WiFi bridge.

Technically, there is no reason a multi-connection serial to WiFi product couldn't be created. It would need to allow multiple socket connections on the WiFi set and mux them onto the single serial connection to the camera.

 

[Brian Merlen]

id love to see wireless in camera grading...in general the varicam 35 has a lot of features i hope red starts to add in the future..

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Technically, there is no reason a multi-connection serial to WiFi product couldn't be created. It would need to allow multiple socket connections on the WiFi set and mux them onto the single serial connection to the camera.

Hmmmmm .... the HOTLINK actually has the ability to run dual sockets at the same time (two connections) - I should look into enabling / testing this.

 

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

id love to see wireless in camera grading...in general the varicam 35 has a lot of features i hope red starts to add in the future..

Brian

What kind of in camera grading you would like to see ?
All camera look settings can be altered easily using the free iPad app...

FWIW House of cards season 3 has been pre graded (or pre-looked) wirelessly on set by the DOP on 2 DRAGONS using OS X foolcontrol on his laptop...

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Trent, like discussed earlier and suggested above by Jonathan it would rock if camera could write a .rmd file while in playback (or on record too) to ingest more metadata (circled take, markers or alternate look, and include all RCX metadata note fields.

AnD a happy nEw yeaR !

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

-----
Trent, like discussed earlier and suggested above by Jonathan it would rock if camera could write a .rmd file while in playback (or on record too) to ingest more metadata (circled take, markers or alternate look, and include all RCX metadata note fields.

AnD a happy nEw yeaR !

Mikael - since the camera doesn't make RMD's - it writes the meta into the R3D header - why not just have FOOLCONTROL create RMDs in the iOS app - which could be emailed / icloud / dropboxed back to the data manager or DIT. Since FOOLCONTROL has all the clip name and all the camera meta - you just add new USER created meta and write an RMD.

 

[Trent Lillehaugen]

Hmmmmm .... the HOTLINK actually has the ability to run dual sockets at the same time (two connections) - I should look into enabling / testing this.

Since the protocol is stateless you can simply mux the incoming packets together to go out the serial to the camera and send any incoming serial packets from the camera out both sockets. The biggest problem would be buffering complete RCP packets on each socket before sending it to the camera. This will require enough memory on the device and a full RCP parser to determine when a complete packet has been received. Feel free to email me (first dot last at red dot com) for any more details you may need.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Since the protocol is stateless you can simply mux the incoming packets together to go out the serial to the camera and send any incoming serial packets from the camera out both sockets. The biggest problem would be buffering complete RCP packets on each socket before sending it to the camera. This will require enough memory on the device and a full RCP parser to determine when a complete packet has been received. Feel free to email me (first dot last at red dot com) for any more details you may need.

The other option might be to use the "Multi-TCP LINK" function that the HOTLINK has as well - which allows 5 clients to connect and transmit all data as a sequence - and everything coming from the HOTLINK would be replicated and broadcast to the 5 clients - I'll email you and run some tests as well.

 

[Wil Wong]

Not that this is probably possible but I would love the Redlink to transmit wireless video/audio (possibly integrated with Foolcontrol). Too bad it wasn't a solar panel as well...just thinking outside the box.

 

[Mike P.]

I'm with Wil; even a lower res version for framing would be useful (all GoPros come with built-in and the app is free -- just sayin'), though obviously a ~1080 image would be ideal (great for focus)...

 

[Brian Merlen]

3d luts instead of looks wud be cool... +1 4 wireless feed 2

Brian

What kind of in camera grading you would like to see ?
All camera look settings can be altered easily using the free iPad app...

FWIW House of cards season 3 has been pre graded (or pre-looked) wirelessly on set by the DOP on 2 DRAGONS using OS X foolcontrol on his laptop...

-----
Trent, like discussed earlier and suggested above by Jonathan it would rock if camera could write a .rmd file while in playback (or on record too) to ingest more metadata (circled take, markers or alternate look, and include all RCX metadata note fields.

AnD a happy nEw yeaR !

 

[Trent Lillehaugen]

The other option might be to use the "Multi-TCP LINK" function that the HOTLINK has as well - which allows 5 clients to connect and transmit all data as a sequence - and everything coming from the HOTLINK would be replicated and broadcast to the 5 clients - I'll email you and run some tests as well.

You will need to ensure you interleave complete RCP packets from the multiple sockets into the camera. The built in function of your module might appear to work if each RCP packet fits in one TCP frame, but longer RCP packets may have to be fragmented and your module won't know it's a partial RCP packet.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Okay - so I just tested this and HOTLINK works right out of the box this way as the "factory default" is set to "TCP SERVER" - so up to 5 iOS devices running FOOLCONTROL can connect to the HOTLINK at the same time.

 

[Trent Lillehaugen]

Okay - so I just tested this and HOTLINK works right out of the box this way as the "factory default" is set to "TCP SERVER" - so up to 5 iOS devices running FOOLCONTROL can connect to the HOTLINK at the same time.

Please reread this comment I made:

You will need to ensure you interleave complete RCP packets from the multiple sockets into the camera. The built in function of your module might appear to work if each RCP packet fits in one TCP frame, but longer RCP packets may have to be fragmented and your module won't know it's a partial RCP packet.

You may be tricked into thinking it works. However, I am pretty sure it will break on larger RCP packets sent to the camera.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

You may be tricked into thinking it works. However, I am pretty sure it will break on larger RCP packets sent to the camera.

Well ... so far I haven't been able to break it using a couple iPhones doing the most common basic functions (changing settings, monitoring histogram, etc.) - what would be an example of a function that sends a larger RCP packet?

 

[Trent Lillehaugen]

Well ... so far I haven't been able to break it using a couple iPhones doing the most common basic functions (changing settings, monitoring histogram, etc.) - what would be an example of a function that sends a larger RCP packet?

======
Summary
======
There aren't many long RCP packets that get sent to the camera in current RCP based applications. However, there can (and most likely will) be longer packets in the future. Furthermore, long RCP packets aren't the only problem, long lists of sequential short RCP packets can also be a problem.

===========
Potential Problem
===========

The potential problem when merging more than one TCP Socket into a single serial stream is corrupted RCP packets. This can happen when the sockets are not interleaved at RCP packet boundries. Ideally you would get something like this sent to the camera:
[Client 1, Packet 1][Client 1, Packet 2][Client 2, Packet 1][Client 1, Packet 3][Client 2, Packet 2] ... etc

However, you could end up with something like:
[Client 1, Packet 1][Client 1, Packet 2 - part 1][Client 2, Packet 1][Client 1, Packet 2 - part 2][Client 1, Packet 3][Client 2, Packet 2] ... etc

In this case, you would have 2 corrupted RCP packets (Client 1, Packet 2 and Client 2, Packet 1).

Whether your module will break down or not will depend on a lot of things, including, but not limited to:
- What your module is doing internally in its "TCP SERVER" mode
- How iOS decides to segment the outgoing RCP packets into TCP segments
- How the application adds data to the TCP socket
- How much time is between RCP packets being sent
- Timing of TCP packets between clients

TCP sockets are data streams. That is, they are used to transfer a stream of bytes from one client to another. The RCP protocol is on top of TCP (OSI layers 5-7), and the bytes of each RCP packet it sent across the TCP socket - the socket doesn't not know when the end of one RCP packet and the beginning of the next occurs. When the iOS application is sending an RCP packet, or a sequence of RCP packets, it is simply writing data out to the socket. How that data is fragmented and sent to the camera is up to the OS. However, the OS does not know anything about the structure of RCP packets so it can not guarantee that complete RCP packets are read out the other end atomically.

It may be very difficult to prove that your system will break (but I am certain it will). Some things you can try:
- Send long RCP packets from one or more of your clients (the longest app->camera packet I can think of in current applications would be to change the monitor priority list in the menu tree of our iPad application). You can also create and send dummy packets that are arbitrarily long from a test application.
- Send multiple RCP packets quickly (so that they are written very quickly together into the socket). You can accomplish this using our iPad's presets. Again, you could create a test application to do the same.

Probably the most difficult part for you to judge is whether a failure occurred or not. Since you don't know which packet(s) would be corrupted you need to check that everything you set was actually changed on the camera.

==========
Correct Solution
==========

The "correct" solution is to parse each of the incoming TCP sockets until a complete and valid RCP packet is found. Once found, the RCP packet should be sent to the camera via the serial port. This will guarantee that you are interleaving together complete packets into the output serial stream. However, this requires that you have enough buffer space to hold the partial RCP packets on each socket. You also need to include a full RCP packet parser (which can be found in the RCP SDK) in your micro.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

on the camera.

==========
Correct Solution
==========

The "correct" solution is to parse each of the incoming TCP sockets until a complete and valid RCP packet is found. Once found, the RCP packet should be sent to the camera via the serial port. This will guarantee that you are interleaving together complete packets into the output serial stream. However, this requires that you have enough buffer space to hold the partial RCP packets on each socket. You also need to include a full RCP packet parser (which can be found in the RCP SDK) in your micro.

Okay - I get it now. Great info. Will roll this into the "next" thing

 

[Tyler Stromberg]

This is only a limitation of the current serial to WiFi products (i.e. REDLINK BRIDGE and, I would assume, OFFHOLLYWOOD's HOTLINK and HOTBOX). The camera currently supports multiple connections (up to 8 concurrent connections over Ethernet). Of course, this means you would need to use a GigE to WiFi bridge.

Technically, there is no reason a multi-connection serial to WiFi product couldn't be created. It would need to allow multiple socket connections on the WiFi set and mux them onto the single serial connection to the camera.

What currently happens if a device is already connected to the REDLINK? Does the camera still show up when scanning? If so, what happens when you try to connect?

 

[Trent Lillehaugen]

What currently happens if a device is already connected to the REDLINK? Does the camera still show up when scanning? If so, what happens when you try to connect?

I can't speak to the HOTLINK or HOTBOX, but when using REDLINK BRIDGE the camera is still detected, but connecting to the device fails. When using foolcontrol you get the following error message:

CONNECTION ERROR

PLEASE ENSURE THAT THE IP ADDRESS BELONGS TO
THE CAMERA, OR THAT IT IS NOT YET CONTROLLED
BY ANOTHER DEVICE...
[OK]

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Crazy request: HTTP/JSON alterate interface.