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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 :)

What will we do when it breaks?

good suggestion Crewpix.. although a really think the knob is not an issue anymore ( time will tell )

SD card comes with camera, and there are no fuses.
 
Jarred Land said:
SD card comes with camera, and there are no fuses.
Click to expand...

Stuff that comes with the camera isn't of much use to camera assistants who are trying to build a bullet-proof toolkit to support high-end Red shoots. I have no idea what the rental house may have received in the box with the camera, I just know that I'm the one that has to make it work 2000 miles from the nearest repair facility/Radioshack/Fedex office.

Since only owners can download firmware, I need a source for (at the very least) a known-good stable firmware I can plug in when it all goes to hell.

You guys need to get used to the idea that once these babies hit the rental market, it isn't going to be 'owners' who are using them 90% of the time. Already I am being asked to supoprt a camera that I only have access to as an 'outsider'.

Does the Red One use self-resetting thermal fuses?
 
CrewPix.com said:
Stuff that comes with the camera isn't of much use to camera assistants who are trying to build a bullet-proof toolkit to support high-end Red shoots. I have no idea what the rental house may have received in the box with the camera, I just know that I'm the one that has to make it work 2000 miles from the nearest repair facility/Radioshack/Fedex office.
Click to expand...

Every camera I've rented has to be properly supported by the rental facility. If they can't give me EVERYTHING I need then I don't rent from them. I'm paying them not RED for premium support and damn well better give the service I'm paying for.

When I rent a Viper I never call Thompson when I have problems, I call the rental facility because it their cameras and their responsibility.

Will the rental houses balk at customers putting on beta firmware and then blaming the facility when problems happen?
 
What happens if a camera really breaks? Are there going to be any repair facilities or service stations around the world? Or do we have to ship the camera to Red? Would you ship out a replacement body to a production while the original camera is in repair?

How long will the average turnaround be?
 
CrewPix.com said:
Stuff that comes with the camera isn't of much use to camera assistants who are trying to build a bullet-proof toolkit to support high-end Red shoots. I have no idea what the rental house may have received in the box with the camera, I just know that I'm the one that has to make it work 2000 miles from the nearest repair facility/Radioshack/Fedex office.
Click to expand...

I know that most facilities renting out the red are sending along a DIT or AC that knows what they're doing, and sending out a small kit of things that the AC's will need.

As far as Firmware, that was my job to deal with, and to make any firmware changes, issues, as invisible to the production as possible.

And I highly doubt that customers are going to be requesting to go on beta firmware. It seems that build 9 answers everybody's immediate needs as far as productions go. As far as the joystick, if the camera lives in a good pelican case with a proper place for it, and you aren't beating on it, I don't see how the joystick is going to break, especially with that new guard.
 
All you need is for a rental house to install alpha/beta firmware, thinking it's the latest and greatest, and then experience problems on set. The assistant/tech/whatever needs to be able to downgrade. It is not always practical to call someone in from the rental house or stop production for hours.

The Red One will eventually be a common tool, just like every other rental camera. It can't continue to go out on every job with a 'babysitter'.

Cameras don't live in Pelican cases, they just sleep there :-)
They live on people's shoulders, on car mounts, hanging off of helicopters and boats, on dollies, strapped to trees, etc. Hence the need for basic on-set repairs.

Professional, experienced camera assistants like me do this for a living, which is why I am asking for access to the basic tools needed to do my job. I would be very nervous to take a single Red One body on an away job at this point because I have no way to keep it up and running when situations arise in the field.
 
I dont really understand what you keep asking for Crewpix.... "basic tools to do your job"? And are you asking us to supply them for you?

Are you asking us to help you find out where to get an SD card? Seriously?

Im confused.. help me understand what you want.

love this line though... you nailed it. " Cameras don't live in Pelican cases, they just sleep there :-) "
 
He just needs access to the firmware.
 
Alright, just be aware of one thing when you download new software to a camera.....most rental houses have a signed waiver from production that you will NOT EVER download new software to one of their cameras. So if you do not want to buy the camera from the rental house, do not download anything to the camera other than user settings.


AC's should NOT download new software to a rented camera EVER....unless you have written permission to do so from the rental house.

I support RED'S policy of downloads only being available for camera owners....it really just makes sense.

There is a famous story, I think you know this one Crewpix, of software being downloaded to a camera and the AC having to wait several hours for Panasonic's head of camera engineering to figure out how to undo the damage of a corrupted file from the internet.

Rented cameras are different than owned cameras.
 
JDB said:
most rental houses have a signed waiver from production that you will NOT EVER download new software to one of their cameras.
Click to expand...

yes... and even owners should be very sketched out about changing firmwares in the middle of a shoot. Thats why we have the Beta firmwares and the Release firmwares... save the experimentation for home-time.
 
CrewPix.com said:
As far as I can tell, the back half of a Red One is just a powerful little Linux computer. Sounds like it's time for Red to Open Source the firmware and let the community develop what we need. When someone builds in something great, like USB keyboard support or drivers for a Bluetooth dongle, it could be added to the 'official' release.

This would ease some of the burden on the Red engineers so they can continue building even cooler stuff.
Click to expand...

I think it would be to early right now. Let them get stable releases, no more codec and whatever changes. There should be kind of a final stage before its gonna made open source. 6 months at least.
And then let the party begin.
 
JDB said:
Alright, just be aware of one thing when you download new software to a camera.....most rental houses have a signed waiver from production that you will NOT EVER download new software to one of their cameras. ...AC's should NOT download new software to a rented camera EVER....unless you have written permission to do so from the rental house.

I support RED'S policy of downloads only being available for camera owners....it really just makes sense....
Click to expand...

Firmware uploads should reside in a service area. And service area should be protected by a simple, user/owner-changeable 4-digit code or thelike.

Isn't that the case ? If, as a renter, I feel to let somebody change the firmware in that extraordinary case, I pass him the code via phone and he might load the other firmware thats stored on the card. After rental I change the code, done.

Thats more or less how we did it with the SONY stuff, when I desperatly needed to adjust something the service engineer passed me the key-combo or the code. Because he trusted me.
When its locked, you're not forced to let somebody do any software changes.
Signed waiver or not.
 
JDB said:
There is a famous story, I think you know this one Crewpix, of software being downloaded to a camera and the AC having to wait several hours for Panasonic's head of camera engineering to figure out how to undo the damage of a corrupted file from the internet.
Click to expand...

Hey, that sounds like something that happened to me. (famous? wow, thanks!) You left out the part about it being 4:30pm on the Friday of a US long weekend and the calls to Japan required to learn how to reboot the camera.


Here's the story:

I used a current-version, readily-available program provided by Panasonic so end-users (not just owners or rental houses) could create Varicam user settings on a laptop and record them to an SD card to load into cameras. If you have ever attempted to navigate a Varicam's menus, you will understand why this software was necessary. You could only alter the basic settings such as framelines, gamma and what the gain switch does, all of which are available in even the most locked-down Varicam. We were shooting a documentary over the course of 2 years and renting cameras around the world, so it was nice to start with the same settings. I simply asked the camera to read a text-based user settings file from an SD card.

At one particular rental house, the camera completely crashed while attempting to read the settings file created by Panasonic's own software. This card had previously worked flawlessly with cameras rented in London, Tokyo and Munich and had even been sent by email to another shooter to use in L.A.

Some rental houses don't, as a matter of course, perform regular firmware updates. If gear is mostly working, why risk the time and expense upgrading it? I partially understand this from a business point of view, but the computer-geek in me wonders what is missing.

For example, JDB, last week I tested with a Red One that was still running firmware from August 2007. It was challenging to do much when many of the features I am used to were unavailable. I'm not sure the tests were all that relevant since so much has changed since August.

I am completely happy to not perform firmware upgrades in the field as long as the cameras come with stable, production-quality innards. From a rental house point of view, would it be better for my production to shut down for a few hours while someone locates an engineer in the middle of the night, or for me to have a card with manufacturer-approved, known-stable firmware I could boot up in a pinch?


We are entering a new world where the boxes we use to create our images are mostly computers and are always in a state of developmental flux. Those who embrace this will succed. Those running firmware from August may find it challenging.
 
augenmensch aka therock said:
I think it would be to early right now. Let them get stable releases, no more codec and whatever changes. There should be kind of a final stage before its gonna made open source. 6 months at least.
And then let the party begin.
Click to expand...

You are absolutely right. I just wanted to plant the seed.
 
Jarred Land said:
I dont really understand what you keep asking for Crewpix.... "basic tools to do your job"? And are you asking us to supply them for you?

Are you asking us to help you find out where to get an SD card? Seriously?
Click to expand...

I think I can find an SD card. Thanks.

What I'm saying is that even though non-owners are mostly persona-non-grata on red.com/support, more and more of us professional camera assistants are going to be the ones primarily in charge of your gear.

If you have not worked in high-end feature and commercial production, you should talk to your contacts at rental houses and learn just how much responsibility and involvement camera assistants have. The bottom line is that we are the ones (on commercials, music videos and features at least) who are actually specifying, operating, and maintaining your gear. Many DPs are great at lighting, panning and tilting, but couldn't load a mag/format a card to save their lives. (*see below)

I applaud the fact that you have removed the password protection from the user manual download, but I hope it is simply the first step. We need access to the stuff that makes Red camera work:
-Stable, (release version only) firmware
-current manuals, tech notes and advisories
-replacement parts for the things that can break (we have already heard about joystick balls and compact flash pins)
-RedAlert, RedCine, Redwhatever

I could easily ask the Red owners I know to supply me with a copy of the current stable firmware for use in emergencies, but I would prefer to acquire it throught legitimate channels.

It's not, as some might suggest, a wild west where we want to install just anything on the Red Camputer. If anybody wishes for a rock-solid camera platform it's the assistants whose next job depends on how well the last one went.

At this point I feel like I am acquiring my Red skills from a third-party discussion board, and from guessing what might eventually break or be needed. Would I take a Red One to the Sahara or the Rocky Mountains as I have done with Arri's? Not yet. I want to work with you to make this camera a viable alternative to the film-based workhorses we know, love, and trust.

.
.

* The guys I work with , of course, know their stuff :-)
 
So everyone knows...crewpix and I both know each other quite well, so we can disagree. (I hope)

About the panasonic software.....to note...Panasonic changed it from their website the same day as the problem occured. We were running the newest software, and the file on the web was not compatible with the file you were using. Not your fault, but please, no software installs in a camera at 4:30 on a Friday. Not good for your nerves, or mine.

As for the RED software from August 2007, this actually makes my point. The camera was not owned by us, so I would have no right to upgrade the firmware in this prototype camera. Please note: This was a personal favour that we offered to your DOP to come in and take a look at a Red. This was not a shoot, or even a test for production. A simple favour.

As for AC's upgrading or changing software in the field....please remember that you are not the client, your producer is. And the producer has signed a contract that prohibits the changing of firmware, so just call the rental houses 24 hour on call phone number and get permission.
 
JDB said:
The camera was not owned by us, so I would have no right to upgrade the firmware in this prototype camera.
Click to expand...

Good point. I completely understand what you are saying.

My perspective is that on a commercial set where downtime costs $5,000 to 10,000 an hour, unplugging the camera while someone finds/calls/wakes an engineer is career-limiting. There have already been examples of firmware that is believed to be solid crashing under certain situations. An SD card in my emergency kit would go a long way to making both me and the rental house look better.

Might I suggest that the cameras go out with a backup, last-known-good firmware on a card?
 
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