This camera IS a joke.

[davidjakubovic]

Thank you all for the assistance and thoughts. I hope to have more success with this camera in the future, now that I realize it is much more high maintenance that we originally thought.

David

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Make sure your DP learn it before he touches it HAHAHAHA.

The error codes where all troubles anyone who knows the camera could have told you guys about and it wouldn't have been any trouble at all.

There's no use in going into this again.

Would you have rented a 35mm camera without knowing how to load it?

A camera is a camera haaahaha you guys deserve the troubles you had.

Ohh by the way it is very well stated that it's still in the making and that's another thing both you and your DP should have known about.


regards,

Fredrik Callinggard

[Matthew Rogers]

First off, what build where you all using?

Something obviously was not right because it seems that most people are not having as much trouble as you.

Matthew

[Emanuel A.]

Are you this David Jakubovic by any chance?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1398209/

Just wondering...

[Fredrik Callinggard]

And yes that was an arrogant post but you guys clearly were arrogant when you approached this project.

Arrogant enough not to learn your equipment and then stupid enough to blame it.

Baptism by fire is cool with me but don't run home like cry babies if you can't handle it.

Your a waste of this forums time and I have no idea why I'm bothering to write this hahahaha

[Fredrik Callinggard]

OK I'm sorry to lash at you guys like that but you're asking for it. Both posts clearly shows that you went in head over heels into this project.

For all you who were not there today.

His DP posted a thread were we all realized that they hadn't known what they were doing and disregarded the suggestion on having someone with experience with the camera during the shoot. Just as stated in this post.

They learnt the camera by reading the manual on the day.

I rest my case.

As said it's clearly stated that the camera is still not 100% finished and the suggestions of having a DIT on set was not for nothing.

I've been on a lot of shoots where I've had to learn the equip and I've never blamed the equip for my inexperience. You can say all you want about how experienced you guys are, but you had never shot with this camera before hence the word.... inexperienced.

I think there's a lesson to be learnt, never take anything for granted.

Kind regards,


Fredrik

[Cüneyt Kaya]

Can you answer this simple questions please?

which build?
redcode 36 or redcode 28?
recorded to CF or Drive?
4k or 3k or 2k?
16:9 or 2:1?
ASA setting?
Tungsten lighting or daylight?
ND Filters involved, if yes how much, 1.2...1.8...etc.?
Which Shutter mode?

Did you use Redalert, Redcine or the proxies?
Which Redalert or Redcine settings did you used (exactly in the output/shot and Color tab?

To what codec did you export?
which colorspace: rec709, redlog, pdlog

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Can you answer this simple questions please?

Don't bother. i bet he won't answer, neither did his DP. So much for actually want to learn the camera.


regards


Fredrik

[Kreisky]

This past weekend I directed a music video shoot. The DP and camera crew are a very experienced and extremely competent crew that I have worked with many times before. The DP who posted the thread called "is this camera a joke?" knows his work very well. THE CAMERA WAS A NIGHTMARE. The picture is gorgeous but at what price?????

My DP and I were both extremely excited to use the Red, but I was absolutely mortified at how much time was spent on dealing with it throughout the day. I am told "it's a very technical camera and you need to have a tech on set". Oh please. A camera is a camera. You turn it on, push some settings, click record and it is supposed to record. Then you click record again and it stops. That's it! This camera doesn't seem to know this workflow. Honestly, it is quite wrong for a camera to be out on the market that is so unreliable. I understand it is still being worked on but honestly, if that is the case, it should be very well stated that it is not perfectly ready for a real production. Why on earth do i have to spend extra money on a camera TECH when I have a DP, two AC's and a $15,000 budget that I need to use on making the video look good?

To all those saying that the previous post was over exaggerated, it was not. I WANT to work with this camera again, but only if it works. The picture is so great obviously that it is a huge advantage, but if we were shooting an actual scene with actors and emotions and had to break for 10 minutes between EVERY TAKE, then it would be much much worse.

It is like buying a ferrari whithout having a driving license.....

[Cüneyt Kaya]

Don't bother. i bet he won't answer, neither did his DP. So much for actually want to learn the camera.


regards


Fredrik

man i just want to help...i know which of the setting combinations i asked brings the best results and the easiest workflow...but hey you cant force people to let them help for free.

[Fredrik Callinggard]

man i just want to help...i know which of the setting combinations i asked brings the best results and the easiest workflow...but hey you cant force people to let them help for free.

I know and it's very honorable of you and I would not have been so rude as I was if it wasn't for that it's just a repeat of what was earlier today. They're just whining.

(They did most probably try to shoot redcode 36 on CF cards etc. They hired the camera from a private owner and rented accessories from a rental. Didn't bother about having someone on set with the thought that they had all the experience in the world. As said.... a camera is a camera).

As stated earlier today by a very funny man Lewis - Pure DIVA BS.

fredrik

[Shawn Nelson]

Why are you guys treating this troll like a legitimate poster? Look at the timing of this post, the nature of it, and that it comes from a first time poster. Both this thread and the sister thread are pure BS due to the timing alone. Shame on you sir, have you no decency??

[Brent J. Craig]

Can you answer this simple questions please?...

I suspect that not only could he not answer any of the questions, but he probably doesn't even know what you are asking.

It sounds like these winners had an embarrassing shoot because of their lack of planning and think they are now taking it out on the folks who built the camera (which is a very weird choice).

I'm gratified that they are at least using their full names when they post. Like many film professionals, I have my little "list" of people who will strangely never find me to be available when they call. :-)

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Kaya, you are very gracious to help them....if they don't happen to answer simple questions, then we know what's going on.

I'd like to help them too, but we can't help some people who don't want to be helped.

[Fredrik Callinggard]

The AC has just answered the first thread. Maybe this can be turned around to something constructive.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYY IAMMMMMMMMMMMM QUOOOOOOOOOOOOTINNNG THE AC
YONI

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11665&page=12

__________________________________________________ ___________________________________
In response to the post and responses:
I am amazed to meet (for the first time that is..) a community with such terrible manners. A quite humuristic posting is responded with nasty personal remarks about the crew, a lecture about Chaplin's history etc..Really ugly people ! Mr. Kelly and RGDfilms especially !!
I was the 1stAC on this shoot so it's clear. And these are my personal remarks about the Red experience to those of you who are interested:
90% of our problem were CODEC ERROR while shooting to the RED Harddrive.
No "DIT" would be able to fix that. Same for DROP FRAMES. In both cases we lost a take, 10-15 minutes each time for changing Media and reboot and off course the break of workflow, confidence and patience on everyones end: crew, director and talent. The bottom line here is that indeed you can use the RED only with a full on support, several drives, endless tests and restricted shooting conditions. Waiting on camera is a big no no for anyone who ever worked on real "commercial" shoots. As camera man I can't keep telling the director to take 15min break once every hour. I am being asked by various RED enthusiast "did you do hand held ?" well if that is a problem then we can continue testing in shooting flower vases in mum's living room. No hand held. No Jib / crane work. Yes we were a small indie music video shoot. No we didn't have the world at our feet. The rental house messed up with several simple things we needed. And no we don't work for Sony and that whole "brand name" competition is ridiculous ! Like Sony would even care about us..
And as for the RED company I have one complaint: We can't have a confusing online forum as the source of our knowledge. I downloaded the 13 build manual from their website and learned it by heart. It is very simple. But it has no mentioning of simple things that they must highlight rather then ask me to read into thousands of forum threads that unfortunately are filled with personal issues like here. They need to take responsibility's and add the warnings to their own site and to change their "Sexy-innocent" appearance to an honest professional one. I am a punkrocker and I got plenty of that in rehersal space. I don't bring it to film set.
(one more personal remark and I'll find you and stick my Gretch up y'r Arss Mr. Kelly )
List the issues per build on the site. When I download a manual that says "Build 13" I expect it to accommodate that and not be some general blue print for a future manual. I know you guys at "RED" work hard and I am like you very enthusiastic about it but honesty is important. To say here is important that rental houses (which are the middle man) behave the same and let you go experimenting without taking the proper support. In the Past when renting CINEALTA I would have the owner of the company available for me 24/7 on his personal cellphone. It was a small indie feature and he is one of the biggest rentals in NYC. He was there for me every minute. Just in case. RED goes on long weekends. Something to think about.
There is no mention of not having audio preview on camera. That took another hr of our time on set to figure there's none.
A system that has a DROP FRAME counter on the LCD is already a problem.
As mentioned before, the LCD would say "4k" when camera's screen would approve that we are on "4k2:1" . Again a little bug that messes the workflow and brings doubts as to what is actually going on.
We haven't lost any footage that was captured but have lost several takes as I said. If it was a narrative dialog shoot it would be a disaster.
The footage looks amazing no doubt, and the RAW possibilities are well know to me from digital photography workflow.
I belive that RED is the future of filmmaking but it is not the present. Thanks for all the people who have good faith and help makeing it happen. Some of us just cant afford to do that as we believe in filmmaking as an art form. Composition.Beat. Workflow. it's an orchestra not a tech lab.
Some people mentioned 35mm as equivalent. 35mm is a simple workflow. If a magazine fails on camera it is thrown to hell because it costs too much to give it a second try. We also need to make living and don't have time to spend mummy's credit card for experiments. Welcome to NYC filmmaking.
I will wait patiently for the RED to stabilize and I can't understand why people react with such bad manners. Shame !
Thanx to THEMUSIC and SYCOPHANT for being normal..
__________________________________________________ __________________________________

[Cüneyt Kaya]

THISSSSSSS ISSSSS A QUOOOOTE
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11665&page=12

__________________________________________________ ______________________________________

P.S to visceralpsyche:
We indeed started with 4k 16:9 and only after switching to 4k2:1 the "RED" started working smooth (The LCD-monitor insisted we are still on 4K..)

Thanks,

yoni

__________________________________________________ _____________________________________

[Cüneyt Kaya]

now we can start to analyze

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Dear Yoni,

The post was not humorous don't try to sell us that. You're jokes on set about the camera was, but only if told differently.

Your post is constructive. Here's something that can hopefully be resolved or looked into. The initial posts where just whining and not even followed through when people in the start tried to help out.

I'd also like to say that it being difficult knowing certain things because it can only be achieved by visiting this forum is a problem and was also widely discussed as one on the other thread. Please read it and you'll find that the discussion on that thread was mostly a healthy one.

As for the people having jokes on the behalf of you're DP and Director. I think that their approach in posting these threads brought that upon themselves and by not answering when people started to ask them what was up.... well... what to say more than who would take it serious.

Regards,


Fredrik Callinggard

[Cüneyt Kaya]

maybe a bad redrive cable, or a bad drive?-----
did you get dropped frames with 4k 2:1 on CF cards, i guess not.

[Fredrik Callinggard]

K Berlin,

Switch to the other thread Yoni is there hahahaha

[rod bradley]

Kaya, I appreciate your frustration and regret that your frustration was met with rudeness by some. Perhaps the expression of your frustration was felt as anger by some otheres, but I have always found the meeting frustration with frustration/anger/rudeness only pulls everything into the mire. (I will not point out the obvious global example that the world is paying a price for.)

At any rate, I would like to apologize as one member of this community for the rudeness of a few. I hope you will be met with greater common decency and understanding in the future -- and I suspect the vast majority of the Red community would feel exactly the same. Those who deal in fear and anger (the real source of rudeness I believe) are still, thank god, in the minority.

It is also true as well, that the ever changing nuances of the Red camera benefit by having someone with up-to-date (the minute) experience on set.

All the best to you in the future -- on Red or not...

[Mike Prevette]

EDIT: Kaya was not the AC.

I just think you were on one of those "Cursed" jobs. I was an AC for a long time, and I know that no matter how prepared you are or how good the gear is, sometimes jobs just go to hell.

I don't want to make excuses for a camera that obviously has its kinks. However I think with something so new, and no one on set being experienced with it your asking for trouble.

All your comments were very valid though. If I were you I would feel very burnt. When the camera goes down everyone looks at the AC.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

Kaya, I appreciate your frustration and regret that your frustration was met with rudeness by some. Perhaps the expression of your frustration was felt as anger by some otheres, but I have always found the meeting frustration with frustration/anger/rudeness only pulls everything into the mire. (I will not point out the obvious global example that the world is paying a price for.)

At any rate, I would like to apologize as one member of this community for the rudeness of a few. I hope you will be met with greater common decency and understanding in the future -- and I suspect the vast majority of the Red community would feel exactly the same. Those who deal in fear and anger (the real source of rudeness I believe) are still, thank god, in the minority.

It is also true as well, that the ever changing nuances of the Red camera benefit by having someone with up-to-date (the minute) experience on set.





All the best to you in the future -- on Red or not...

HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPP ITSSSSSSSSSS NOOOOT MEEEEEEEE......................I just didnt know how to quote from another thread......this AC IS NAMED YONI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
here is the link where the discussion is


http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11665&page=12

[Brent J. Craig]

In the Past when renting CINEALTA I would have the owner of the company available for me 24/7 on his personal cellphone.

Wow. I didn't realize the chairman of Sony was doing that. That is pretty good service! :whistling: Jannard did that, but only for the first 100 purchasers.

If I was some kid who took on a job way way over his skill level and caused an entire shoot day of major f-ups, I don't think I would be posting about it like he has.

The entire situation is sad, and now that each of the three stooges has checked in with us, it only gets sadder.


PS - K Berlin - you should edit your post above to make it very clear you are cutting and pasting what someone else wrote. The first time I read your post I thought you were the AC and was shocked that all this happened to a respected, senior member of our community!

[J.R. Hud]

This is a great thread.

I had just had to say it.

These dudes got PWNED by Red. Maybe a handycam would suit them a bit better ? After all, a few settings and one push of the button and you get instant magic.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

PS - K Berlin - you should edit your post above to make it very clear you are cutting and pasting what someone else wrote. The first time I read your post I thought you were the AC and was shocked that all this happened to a respected, senior member of our community!


Man already did.....i was shocked myself when reading mikes post :)

I WAS NOT THE AC.....

[Ed Blythe]

J'ACCUSE K.BERLIN - HE IS TO BLAME - BLUDGEON HIM WITH THE FAULTY EQUIPMENT

Sorry you guys had a bad shoot. Sorry you didn't find a warmer welcome around these parts - pls do stick around, you'll find some of these lads pretty helpful (and threads similar to this one perhaps amusing when they're not aimed at you:gun: )

I wrote all sorts of stuff in this reply about the importance of the DIT (I think Red Technician better describes the job) but that shit's been done to death so I cut it out. Try and sort the wheat from the chaff (if you can - a lot of it's distasteful and indicative of people sitting around waiting for NAB to open it's doors)

Better luck next time.

[davidjakubovic]

Gentlemen,

The unpopularity of our posts is kind of out of control... let's try and maybe look at the issues at hand and at the fact that there are problems that require solving.

First of all, I am not "not responding". I think I am allowed at least 24-48 hours before comments about me ignoring the responses become legitimate.

Second, citing inexperience of the crew as the cause of our problems is silly and kind of ignores the fact that there is a problem. Why take it personally? Obviously the camera has some issues.

The fact that a camera is out in the market that hyped itself so much but has so many problems is frustrating when you get to a set and are constantly stopped by it. The camera should be advertised with the word PROTOTYPE all over it, because it is obviously not totally and entirely ready to be used. Is this not correct? I understand that these "build" things are improvements and stuff, and that's fine, but correcting BUGS?? When Final Cut Pro came out it was HORRIBLE next to Avid, but they kept correcting it and now it's pretty much a great program, but you were never dealing with set pressure because it's post production, so it's a totally different thing. But on a set you want to know that your camera works. These personal remarks make this forum a little silly and high schoolish, please avoid them.

I am a bit less adamant than my DP about never using the thing again. The picture is obviously amazing and I would love to use it again if it works properly.

All the very best,
David Jakubovic

www.davidjaku.com
davidjaku@aol.com

[Shawn Nelson]

its your timing. When was this shoot? I own #27 and have used it consistently for over 7 months, I have not seen problems even remotely like yours for months. The fact that you pop out of nowhere to shit all over Red on the day of nab is too much. Can you address this?

[davidjakubovic]

I have never been to NAB and none of these posts have anything to do with it at all. I want to use this camera and want it to work properly. Nobody is "shitting" on your camera. Read the posts by the DP and AC, I believe these have been very legitimate concerns. I am even saying I would love to use this camera again if it works properly.

This forum has shown itself to be somewhat unhelpful and filled with strange personal comments. Seems like people who spent a lot of money on this camera have trouble hearing about its possible problems. I wish you all the very best and hope to have a more positive experience with it one day. Good Day.

David Jakubovic

davidjaku@aol.com
www.davidjaku.com

[Steven-Marc C.]

David, I think it all started with the tone of that first post by your DP and that whole thing about the camera being a joke. As Shawn and others have stated, this camera is being used professionally all over the world and has been for many months now. While it may have some idiosyncrasies that your rental company / camera crew ought to be responsible for knowing and telling you about, it is far from being a joke. Believe me, we are all for hearing about issues with the camera in order to avoid the kind of experience you've had. It helps when it is done in a professionnal and courteous way. I wish you all the very best and hope you will have a more positive experience with it one day. Good Day.

[Ed Watkins]

David,

I have two RED cameras. When I first got them I had a number of codec problems, but I was using an unstable build of the firmware, and hadn't read enough of the literature on the correct setup.
Since then I have had no problems using stable software builds.

I spent a couple of weeks testing these cameras in a tropical jungle (90 degrees, 80% humidity), running them down zip lines, doing canopy drop shots, shooting from a helicopter, all on hard drives, and I had none of the problems you mention. This leads me to think that:

a) you got a bad camera setup (either a cable or drive wasn't working properly, or the camera was running an old beta build)
OR
b) the settings were mismatched on the camera and recording media

Either way, calling it crap camera with out trying to establish what caused the issues helps no one. I apologize if this forum is hostile, but it is annoying to have a perfectly good piece of kit dumped on without trying to establish what was wrong with it.

[Lewis-M Soucy]

citing inexperience of the crew as the cause of our problems is silly and kind of ignores the fact that there is a problem.

Shooting on Red a commercial job with NO knowledge of the camera first is plain dumb. Goes for ANY camera BTW...


The camera should be advertised with the word PROTOTYPE all over it, because it is obviously not totally and entirely ready to be used.

It IS advertised so (hence this forum...). Everyone that is involved or simply curious closely or remotely in Red technology knows that.

You should just tell the right person on your team, no matter how talented or long is resume is that he went ahead with gear he had no clue about and that was wrong. Not the camera. The very decision to use it without proper expertise.

I wouldn't touch a F900 without solid knowledge. I wouldn't work as an AC or DP for anyone on a 35mm Arri shoot if I never loaded a mag. And I would certainly NEVER say "oh well it's just a camera, right? I've used Aaton before, should be the same, no?"...

Your rental company is also to blame if they didn't provide you with a tested working camera.

I said everything else in the much funnier previous thread...

Let's address the right issues and stop lying to ourselves.

And don't put everything on Jim's shoulders all the time!!! The guy was making sunglasses before for christ's sake!!!
:biggrin:

[Fredrik Callinggard]

David,

We've been posting some possibilities with Yoni your AC on the job. It's hard to tell, but some problems seem to be known ones that got corrected by you during the shoot.

Other problems like frame dropping etc on the HD seems to have something to do with the HD being faulty. You should address it and look into it, if not only for you also for the rental guy.

It's of course not clear since you guys are not 100% sure of what version in the builds etc you've been using and what settings you actually shot on.

But as a general Codec Error is generally an occurrence of trying to force the camera to shot on settings that's not possible for it.

Frame dropping is another thing and as said seems to be something that's faulty. As I understand it stopped when you switched to 2:1 4K on CF cards with redcode 28?

I also want to apologize for my rude comments, but the way you guys posted and then never answered back only seemed like two whining guys with no constructive criticism.

Kind regards,

Fredrik

[P Andersson]

! The guy was making sunglasses before for christ's sake!!!

too funny

[Lewis-M Soucy]

In response to the post and responses:
I am amazed to meet (for the first time that is..) a community with such terrible manners.

And that are still trying to solve your issues...


I was the 1stAC on this shoot so it's clear.

It's clear you went ahead with a cam you've never seen ever, and yet blame it!!!


I am being asked by various RED enthusiast "did you do hand held ?" well if that is a problem then we can continue testing in shooting flower vases in mum's living room. No hand held. No Jib / crane work.

It's a hard drive fact. They don't like being shaken. You shoot BOURNE, you use CF. That's just common sense. In that regard, other HD cams use tape as a media, and that's another story. Tape is more stable than hard drive. Yet, under heavy shaking conditions, even a F900 will drop frames... That's where Red is clever. It offers a drop free solution, making it the most heavy duty cam ever: a CF module! (works great with steady flower pots shots too...)


Yes we were a small indie music video shoot. No we didn't have the world at our feet. The rental house messed up with several simple things we needed.

Hence the haste. Hence the lack of pre. Hence the frustration.


I downloaded the 13 build manual from their website and learned it by heart. It is very simple.

I did the same with the Arri 535 ten years ago. That doesn't make me a Arri 535 specialist, even though I know my craft. Field experience or advice from others with field experience is bare minimum before using any gear on a paid job.


But it has no mentioning of simple things that they must highlight rather then ask me to read into thousands of forum threads that unfortunately are filled with personal issues like here.

A- They don't bother because Red community points issues faster than one can type a users manual. That's the Red idea. And at the speed news spreads here, we all know the cam before we even need to read the manual.

B- Most of OUR professionnal or technical issues ARE personnal issues when you OWN a camera. And you posted your personnal issues in the first place here as well. With a nasty attitude to it on top. So shut up.


They need to take responsibility's and add the warnings to their own site and to change their "Sexy-innocent" appearance to an honest professional one.

Jim is neither sexy (well my wife thinks he's pretty cute) nor innocent. And they're very professionnal. Judging by the extensive amount of business relationship you have with Red, I'm even appaled you dare commenting on their attitude! Especially when appreciating yours!


I am a punkrocker and I got plenty of that in rehersal space. I don't bring it to film set. (one more personal remark and I'll find you and stick my Gretch up y'r Arss Mr. Kelly)

What build is your Gretch? What size? 2K? 4K?


In the Past when renting CINEALTA I would have the owner of the company available for me 24/7 on his personal cellphone.

Was it Mr. Morita or Mr. Nobuyuki?


Some of us just cant afford to do that as we believe in filmmaking as an art form. Composition. Beat. Workflow. it's an orchestra not a tech lab.

Welcome to Red.


We also need to make living and don't have time to spend mummy's credit card for experiments. Welcome to NYC filmmaking.

Wow! You film guys from NY are so like, wow! like EXTREEEME man! How's that for personnal issues in a forum? That's isulting about 3500 people, give or take a few... Can your arse take 3500 Gretches?


I will wait patiently for the RED to stabilize

That's the most wise thing you've said on this forum.


I can't understand why people react with such bad manners. Shame!

That's so gay. RE-READ YOUR INITIAL POSTS!!!


Thanx to THEMUSIC and SYCOPHANT for being normal..

Poor you... If only you really knew them...

[CJ Roy]

Why are you guys treating this troll like a legitimate poster? Look at the timing of this post, the nature of it, and that it comes from a first time poster. Both this thread and the sister thread are pure BS due to the timing alone. Shame on you sir, have you no decency??

Jesus Shawn. This the exact kind of fanboy attitude that makes my job on sets all that more difficult. Instead of attempting to help or sway someone who had a horrible experience with the Red, you slam him? Call him a troll? Accuse him of having no decency? Are you f*cking kidding me?

The camera has problems. To deny that is to shut the eye of reason. Your response helps no one and conveys that Red owners are too sensitive to have a sensible discussion on problems with said camera. Ignoring the problems solves nothing. Berating directors/DP's/crew who had a bad experience is insane, and reflects more on you than them.

What you're failing to understand is that the good majority of working entertainment industry people, do not live here/read every post and are not up to date on the intricacies of the camera. To problem solve the camera, you almost HAVE TO live here or hire an expert. The RED DIT/Techs have to be the liaisons from the camera to the filmmakers, regardless of how uninformed the filmmakers are. Camera owners ARE the experts on the camera. The clients are not. That should be looked at as an opportunity, instead of inflaming the legitimacy argument about this camera's usefulness in the real working, world.

As mistaken as the director is in regards to "a camera is a camera", "just push a button", we cannot simply jump down a Red customer's throat for not knowing the camera. We have to help them to understand that this is a different beast, and like a 35mm camera, you would not, or should not, send an unfamiliar dp/crew with a new camera without someone who KNOWS the camera. A lot of customers see the upfront cost and don't understand the benefits of it. We have to fix that. Inflammatory responses simply do not benefit the RED community and solve nothing.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

Im sorry you had a terrible time with the camera but honestly.. use a hvx next time. This camera is not a toy or a push one button wonder. Having a onsite tech who knows the camera is worth its weight in Gold, and im not just saying that. Its foolish to think that you can just pick up this camera with ZERO experience and make it happen. The least you could do is hire a tech for A DAY to teach the ac or dp the basics. OR instead of paying for a 2nd, hire a tech/2nd who knows the camera.

[Visceral_IvaN]

This past weekend I directed a music video shoot. The DP and camera crew are a very experienced and extremely competent crew that I have worked with many times before. The DP who posted the thread called "is this camera a joke?" knows his work very well. THE CAMERA WAS A NIGHTMARE. The picture is gorgeous but at what price?????

My DP and I were both extremely excited to use the Red, but I was absolutely mortified at how much time was spent on dealing with it throughout the day. I am told "it's a very technical camera and you need to have a tech on set". Oh please. A camera is a camera. You turn it on, push some settings, click record and it is supposed to record. Then you click record again and it stops. That's it! This camera doesn't seem to know this workflow. Honestly, it is quite wrong for a camera to be out on the market that is so unreliable. I understand it is still being worked on but honestly, if that is the case, it should be very well stated that it is not perfectly ready for a real production. Why on earth do i have to spend extra money on a camera TECH when I have a DP, two AC's and a $15,000 budget that I need to use on making the video look good?

To all those saying that the previous post was over exaggerated, it was not. I WANT to work with this camera again, but only if it works. The picture is so great obviously that it is a huge advantage, but if we were shooting an actual scene with actors and emotions and had to break for 10 minutes between EVERY TAKE, then it would be much much worse.

One moment...

I am currently typing this whilst on the final legs of an EIGHTEEN HOUR SHOOT with our Red One at 4:15am here in Tokyo. Red has been running nearly NON STOP for that entire time. We have recorded well over THREE HUNDRED TAKES.

And not one codec error.

In fact the entire crew had started to completely lose their minds far before Red even looked like losing its. It just keeps running. It honestly puts that creepy anthropomorphic Duracell Bunny to shame.

Not only are we getting gorgeous pictures (doubly so given the hotness of the models on our shoot) but we are getting these gorgeous pictures of gorgeous women without any problems for almost 18 hours straight...

Now, it MAY BE that Red performs better under the influence of jaw dropping french models. I know I do.

But realistically todays successful outcome was most probably due to the fact that we know what we are doing.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

One moment...

I am currently typing this whilst on the final legs of an EIGHTEEN HOUR SHOOT with our Red One at 4:15am here in Tokyo. Red has been running nearly NON STOP for that entire time. We have recorded well over THREE HUNDRED TAKES.

And not one codec error.

In fact the entire crew had started to completely lose their minds far before Red even looked like losing its. It just keeps running. It honestly puts that creepy anthropomorphic Duracell Bunny to shame.

Not only are we getting gorgeous pictures (doubly so given the hotness of the models on our shoot) but we are getting these gorgeous pictures of gorgeous women without any problems for almost 18 hours straight...

Now, it MAY BE that Red performs better under the influence of jaw dropping french models. I know I do.

But realistically todays successful outcome was most probably due to the fact that we know what we are doing.

half naked french super models are elementary for this cam.
The cam doesnt like to shoot 70 year 250 pound ladies and ergo shows the codec error....

you work with K.I.T.T. ....treat it like that

[Jonas Nyström]

I've lost it in middle of this thread - total confusion - is it just me?

[PaulClements]

I said this in the other post but I will reiterate it here for your sake David. If a new build is put onto the camera and that build for whatever obscure reason doesn't go on correctly you will experience all the problems you've listed.

It is the responsibility of whoever rented the camera to you to test it thoroughly and this is where you have been let down, not with the camera.

Paul

[Shawn Nelson]

PM sent to you CJ.


Jesus Shawn. This the exact kind of fanboy attitude that makes my job on sets all that more difficult. Instead of attempting to help or sway someone who had a horrible experience with the Red, you slam him? Call him a troll? Accuse him of having no decency? Are you f*cking kidding me?

The camera has problems. To deny that is to shut the eye of reason. Your response helps no one and conveys that Red owners are too sensitive to have a sensible discussion on problems with said camera. Ignoring the problems solves nothing. Berating directors/DP's/crew who had a bad experience is insane, and reflects more on you than them.

What you're failing to understand is that the good majority of working entertainment industry people, do not live here/read every post and are not up to date on the intricacies of the camera. To problem solve the camera, you almost HAVE TO live here or hire an expert. The RED DIT/Techs have to be the liaisons from the camera to the filmmakers, regardless of how uninformed the filmmakers are. Camera owners ARE the experts on the camera. The clients are not. That should be looked at as an opportunity, instead of inflaming the legitimacy argument about this camera's usefulness in the real working, world.

As mistaken as the director is in regards to "a camera is a camera", "just push a button", we cannot simply jump down a Red customer's throat for not knowing the camera. We have to help them to understand that this is a different beast, and like a 35mm camera, you would not, or should not, send an unfamiliar dp/crew with a new camera without someone who KNOWS the camera. A lot of customers see the upfront cost and don't understand the benefits of it. We have to fix that. Inflammatory responses simply do not benefit the RED community and solve nothing.

[Nathan Troutman]

All this thread (and the other thread posted by the DP) tells me is that I will only ever rent my RED provided I am coming along with it as a DIT, camera op, or DP. There is simply too much going on right now with RED's development to allow users to rent a RED like it's an HVX. Or to expect them to "learn it overnight"

However, clearly RED (when used by people who know it and have worked with it) performs quite well - well enough to be shooting all over world. That means owners who know their equipment.

People interested in shooting RED via renting should take note of this experience. You have to ask yourself why you'd rent a RED from a rental house when you can hire a real person who knows the camera with HIS RED camera. This is the way you want to do it. There are plenty of people in NYC that now have this camera. Allocate the money and get the person and the RED. In a way the person is more important than just the camera. When things stabilize more down the road maybe this won't be as important.

But for now - hey producers - this isn't an HVX. Your DP won't be able to just pick this up and go. Otherwise you'll get this experience and will be :bye2: :help:

Our reservation number is up and we're trying to decide if we are going to take the plunge. We're making the call really soon. If and when we do - we will be looking to work heavily in the indie-NYC scene. We want to work on exactly these kinds of productions. Our mission would be to help to leverage the tool that RED is to people who would normally be shooting on an HVX, EX1, etc. And YES that means we have to create a price that is pretty low so these guys can afford us. No RED experience necessary because YES we will be on set with you. You can do the art and we'll make sure the tech is taken care of. This means you'll get to use RED and get great 4K images without the :help:

[davidjakubovic]

Gentlemen,

I thank all of you who had posted serious replies (and to those who didn't, thank you too or something).

No more aggression and annoyance, I am interested in being in touch with the members of this community and learning more, because I am still excited about this camera and its potential.

So I am starting to form this conclusion, please tell me what you think:

The camera, while excellent on many levels, is not perfect yet and one might run into lots of technical troubles with it on a set without a Red tech, but that if a red tech was around we would have had problems solved much faster.

Is this correct? I am not a novice guys, I worked with film and Hi-Def on a professional level many times before, and in the past if I had trouble with a camera on set, it was because the camera was obviously screwed up, but what happened here was different in that the camera was working just fine a lot of the time and at what seemed very random, being problematic. These dropped frame things didn't happen only on the drive, they happened on the cards too, and the problems didn't stop all together when we switched to 2:1, they were less but they still occured.

And yes, you don't go on a set with a 35mm camera if you never loaded film. But if you've used ten different types of 35mm cameras and you're going to use a new one, a training session should be perfectly enough on the new camera before you go on set. My crew DID this on the Red. Do you guys understand the frustration?

So no more aggression, if anyone has anything constructive to say please do. I would like to learn more about this and figure it out for next time.

David Jakubovic

davidjaku@aol.com
www.davidjaku.com

[CJ Roy]

David-

I get the frustration, I've witnessed it first hand. But I think you've got it right in your last statement. The camera needs someone who has had experience with it, and is current with its problems, solutions and tricks.

I believe a good DIT could have steered you clear of 95% of the problems, and he/she would have been able to recognize the difference between a build glitch and a hardware one. There are tons of little things you pick up after a few days of using the camera, and most crews I've assisted have been able to run free for good portions of the day without any hiccups. Like with anything, once you get a feel for it when it's working right, it's easier to spot the problems.

Right now, there are problems with the release build. It's so new that we're still finding them and isolating them and sharing our experiences with one another. That's the beauty of this forum.

And the best part about that is, is that the problems do get noticed, most get fixed relatively quickly... even late at night on a saturday. The camera is constantly changing with enhancements, fixes and some additional new bugs. It's pretty remarkable and the potential of a constantly evolving camera, leaves you always wanting more.

I sincerely hope you give RED another shot, with a good DIT/tech next time around.

-CJ

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Is this correct? I am not a novice guys, I worked with film and Hi-Def on a professional level many times before, and in the past if I had trouble with a camera on set, it was because the camera was obviously screwed up, but what happened here was different in that the camera was working just fine a lot of the time and at what seemed very random, being problematic. These dropped frame things didn't happen only on the drive, they happened on the cards too, and the problems didn't stop all together when we switched to 2:1, they were less but they still occured.

It's really hard to come to terms were the problem could be. You see I've put my camera to the test in numerous commercial shoots already. It's been in extreme heat (95 farhenheit), on cranes, covered in dust. Shooting on RED raid and CF cards on redcode 28 and 36, mostly 36. I've been shooting 16:9 to 2:1 in all formats and speeds and it has literally traveled the world. I have not had one single problem at all and the codec errors that has occured in my camera has all been human errors.

I've been on build 15 - version 2.1.7 (I believe) and upwards.

Maybe it's the build, but then you claim that you were shooting 13, which should be stable.

You see somewhere along the road it's most probably possible that you guys had one thing in your settings that was f...ing it up. One little thing in any of the enable squares that you can tick.

When I went out with mine for the first time, which was literally immediately as soon as I got it. I tested every single possible situation. What would happen if I was shooting with focus assist enabled etc. Some small things had glitches and wouldn't let me record properly etc.

This could only be overseen from extensive testing or extensive research in this forum (I'd like to ad that it only took me a weekend at that was including the render time with learning REDcine and conversion times, which was 75% of th time hahaha).

I can not explain your problems since I've never experienced any frame drop. I have also never used build 13 so I can not speak for it. Hopefully someone else can.

Best of luck


Fredrik Callinggard

[Dylan Reeve]

The camera, while excellent on many levels, is not perfect yet and one might run into lots of technical troubles with it on a set without a Red tech, but that if a red tech was around we would have had problems solved much faster.

Perhaps RED should have the version numbering of their firmware label with 'Beta' - realistically we should probably consider Build fifteen to be v 0.15b or something. It is still in active development.


And yes, you don't go on a set with a 35mm camera if you never loaded film. But if you've used ten different types of 35mm cameras and you're going to use a new one, a training session should be perfectly enough on the new camera before you go on set. My crew DID this on the Red. Do you guys understand the frustration?

RED doesn't really fit into existing paradigms (I try to use that word at least twice a week). It's not a video camera as such. It's not like a 35mm film camera. It's not like a high-end HD camera. It is it's own category really.

So yeah, familiarity with existing systems is important, but it'll only get you so far. And reading the manual is good too, but the camera is still a work in progress and there are issues with it and specialist things to know. Some of it could be better spelled out in the manual perhaps, but overall everyone's needs are different so it's advisable to either employ the services of an expert or do a decent amount of homework before hand (this should probably include a test shoot and edit).

In this case your rental house probably failed you to some extent if they didn't make it clear to you and your crew that the camera was a unique beast. People shouldn't just be sending it out like it's a PD170, because it's not.

Overall, in this thread and the other, the tone in the original messages was very negative, and I think on review you'll find that the response from the community was in kind, and somewhat defensive really. Blanket statements about the usability of the camera were made that were demonstrably inaccurate and blame was leveled at the camera for things that were not it's fault.

[davidjakubovic]

Another interesting idea that came up early on in the day was that maybe the proximity to loudly blasted drums in the close ups of the drums and the vibrations being maybe responsible to some of the problems that the drive was having, which seemed to have gone away when we switched to the card. That seemed to have been disproved later in the day when the problems continued on other shots, but could that have possibly been a trigger?

[CJ Roy]

Another interesting idea that came up early on in the day was that maybe the proximity to loudly blasted drums in the close ups of the drums and the vibrations being maybe responsible to some of the problems that the drive was having, which seemed to have gone away when we switched to the card. That seemed to have been disproved later in the day when the problems continued on other shots, but could that have possibly been a trigger?

Could be. In my experience, the drive is pretty fragile. Did you notice the drop frames from the LCD's drop frame counter? And did that also show up when using the CF cards?

16:9 or 2:1?

[Dylan Reeve]

When you consider that a 160GB 2.5" hard drive consist of a metal disc spinning at 5,400RPM (or maybe even 7,200) with a small head held nanometers above the disc surface and moving around hundreds of times a second it becomes pretty apparent that all sorts of bad things are possible in all sorts of ways.

In fact when you consider that, it becomes almost amazing that you can move them at all while they are operating.

Various high and low frequency vibrations can certainly affect the disc. Although it seems more likely you encountered an actual drive fault, or a fault with the cable.

Sadly, with this kind of gear, it's important to consider murphy's law and have as much redundancy as possible. Ideally that means a spare drive and cable on standby - if nothing else it provides a very important diagnostic option in quickly swapping things around to see if the problem persists.

The CF is always going to be the best option with RED - no external connections, solid-state. Next best will be RED Flash SSD when it ships. Then the drive, which is less expensive, but much more limited in it's potential application.

[Shawn Nelson]

David, I apologize for not giving you the benefit of the doubt. I found your tone disrespectful and unprofessional and so my response assumes from
there. I hope your experience and disposition is more pleasant moving forward.

[davidjakubovic]

Interesting...

CJ Roy, it happened while we were shooting the full 4K but it also happened after we switched to 2:1. At first we thought that was the main problem, the drums, but then we saw it must not have been just that, but it totally could be that it started there.

[CJ Roy]

David-

How did you detect the dropped frames? And how do they appear to you in post?

Thanks.

-CJ

[davidjakubovic]

What happened with the dropped frames was that on certain shots after we finished the shot, the camera said "shot had so and so dropped frames" (I don't remember the exact wording). Also, during the actual shooting of that shot, an error notice would come up that says something about he frames being dropped but it would still continue recording.

When we tried to playback the shot in camera afterwards, it would only go until the point where the frames dropped.

The AC has the drive and is backing up tomorrow and shipping me the footage, I left town before I managed to get the stuff so in two days I will do all the post converting and stuff and I will find out. I will need to learn how to do all that stuff, converting the material and getting it into fcp.

[CJ Roy]

So it sounds like there could be a couple things at play here.

1. The drive may be faulty. The drive can usually handle some vibration, but not when rotating on different axis'. It's small movements, or static. It's been reported to work sometimes on hand-held, but not consistently. Perhaps the music plus any jib rotation/handheld were the culprit. But, more likely it was the drive. Did you have more than one drive? Did they both perform the same way?

2. Codec Error. This was something that plagued us in the beginning, went away for a while and now it's back. It could be a couple of things.
A) The data rate was too high for the CF card, though it should be fine for the drive)
B) Too much high-detail. Some users have been reporting this through build 13, and I believe 15. Nothing can be done with that, it's a RED problem.
C) Faulty CF cards. Jim, himself, had reported that some of the initial CF cards could not keep up with the data rates (I'll try to find the post and quote it here). The problem seemed to go away with newer cards or a few reformatting cycles of those cards.

A couple of things to note. The drives are 5400rpm laptop drives from Hitatchi, and they behave as exactly that. When you fill up and re-format, I believe it's done as a simple "erase" technique where the data is flagged to be written over, but never actually erased. As with normal drives, you can get better performance by zero(ing) out all the data, all over the disk. It could be that the particular drive(s) were used a lot, but never reformatted thoroughly. I'm just speculating here.

Post: Since a lot of what you shot was 16:9, you're forced to transcode using RedCine. Currently RedCine doesn't do very well with dropped frames. They'll show up as solid blue frames within RedCine, and you'll only be able to render out the clip until the it reaches the dropped frame marks. The drives don't simply drop one frame here or there, they drop chunks of frames. So once that occurs, you're pretty forced to abandoned the clip, or set in & out markers for it. Hopefully there's a fix coming soon. For the 2:1 footage, that will render out in RedAlert just fine, but it'll stutter where there are dropped frames. You can simply edit around those, if needed.

I hope this helps, but usually Build 13 is pretty stable. On a few sets, I've had to go back to it because 14 or 15 were behaving erratically. I would certainly inform the rental house about these problems, and perhaps they can test it out and shed some light on what happened.

-CJ

[Jason Wingrove]

I think this thread should head back to its home planet.

_

[Lewis-M Soucy]

Great evolution. From dissent to helpfulness. Just what this community is capable of and made for in my sense. A lot of blood was shed but in the end, what remains and matters, opinions and experience have won over personnal issues and flamboyance.

Have no pride fellows, as one may find love in adversity. humility is the way. Life is full of surprises, ans so is Red...

Have a nice day and welcome to Red David.

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Could it have been harmonic noise distortion??????

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11466&highlight=harmonic

It's a musicvideo and you're playing music loud. Although shooting on CF cards should have sorted that out, but not necessary 100%.

regards,

Fredrik Callinggard

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Another interesting idea that came up early on in the day was that maybe the proximity to loudly blasted drums in the close ups of the drums and the vibrations being maybe responsible to some of the problems that the drive was having, which seemed to have gone away when we switched to the card. That seemed to have been disproved later in the day when the problems continued on other shots, but could that have possibly been a trigger?

Sorry just saw your post. If the drop frames occured when you were close to the "music" sources as drums or speakers, mainly speakers. Or if you where in the middle of the direction of the speakers.
But didn't occur the further away you were - or if you moved out of the projection path. Well then it's possible it was Harmonic noise distortion. What kind of music was it?

fred

[davidjakubovic]

Oh, it was loud blasting rock music, so it's totally possible it had something to do with it.

Roy, to your question, we didn't have two drives. However, we also encountered the problem with the card, not only the drive. But less. At first we thought the drive was being affected by the drums so we changed to the cards and it seemed to work better for the shots that were close to the drums, but later we had the same problems with the cards too, so we were not finding any consistency with when the problems occurred anymore. We did have a jib too and we did do a lot of handheld, so for sure the camera was always moving.

I'm quite nervous now about the shots, with what you said about redcine. I get the footage tomorrow or the next day, so we'll see what happens!

[Fredrik Callinggard]

As for that. I strongly suggest you off line with Prores. Do the conversion with all non 16:9 4K material through compressor from the proxies. That is the quickest way of converting - about 2 or 3:1. With REDcine it'll be 10 to 20:1 depending on clip. Edit in Prores so you don't have the problem of FCP suddenly quitting on you that can happen. The proxy support is not 100% stable, it works but is not stable.

Then have a look at crimsonworkflow.com for moving your project from FCP to REDcine - that's easy


fred

[davidjakubovic]

Excellent, thank you. I will probably ask about this when I get the footage.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

As for that. I strongly suggest you off line with Prores. Do the conversion with all non 16:9 4K material through compressor from the proxies. That is the quickest way of converting - about 2 or 3:1. With REDcine it'll be 10 to 20:1 depending on clip. Edit in Prores so you don't have the problem of FCP suddenly quitting on you that can happen. The proxy support is not 100% stable, it works but is not stable.

Then have a look at crimsonworkflow.com for moving your project from FCP to REDcine - that's easy


fred

what about the new plug in in relation with crimson...does it work? didnt try it myself....

[CJ Roy]

Great evolution. From dissent to helpfulness. Just what this community is capable of and made for in my sense. A lot of blood was shed but in the end, what remains and matters, opinions and experience have won over personnal issues and flamboyance.

Have no pride fellows, as one may find love in adversity. humility is the way. Life is full of surprises, ans so is Red...

Have a nice day and welcome to Red David.

That's the best part of this community, the evolution of discussions. Being defensive because someone had a bad experience with Red, or because someone just flat out hates HD, doesn't do anything for the cause.

You can't argue opinion, but you can help shed some light on the benefits of this camera.

[Lexicon]

Throughout this entire thread I don't think I read once that they were using the RED CF cards. Just CF cards. Maybe that had something to do with it.

[Matt Sconce]

Good luck with the footage. Hope all goes well!

[David Wyatt]

David, a couple of possible culprits:

1. I'd hope that the actual release build of Build 13 was being used rather than one of the earlier, buggier versions of 13 (check with the guy you rented from)? Anything earlier than v.1.8.8 won't be the Release Build but a Beta build instead. By this stage probably only the owner-operator guy that rented out the camera would know for sure. I also wonder whether the codec error you were getting was a "ROCKETIO" error (used to get a few of those on pre-release level builds but not any more, bug solved). I'd also hope all your Red CF cards and RedDrive were properly formatted on camera (if I'm right these came from someone else (a proper rental company) who could've been on a different Firmware Build altogether?). Things like this are all steps an experienced DIT would make sure are covered.

2. As far as I can remember RedCode 36 didn't come out till Build 14 (I think), so the error messages you were getting wouldn't be related to trying to shoot RedCode 36 to Compact Flash. The drop frames would appear to have nothing to with faulty hard drives, cables either because they were happening on both RedDrive & Compact Flash (although less on CF). CF has no moving parts so there's no way loud rock music's gonna throw that off its game.

3. Just out of interest were you running off mains or battery?

4. Shooting 4K 16:9 probably wouldn't have helped your cause (it'll make your post a bit of a pain too), but then I think you changed to 4K 2:1 and still had a few problems?). I don't know if you were trying to do any higher frame rates? What was your project frame rate? 24fps should be fine but if you were trying to do 29.97fps that only worked with the RedDrive not with Compact Flash. On one of the earlier builds if you tried to put in a frame rate that wasn't possible with the resolution (e.g. 40fps at 4K or 80fps at 2K) it would give you a strange error message that looked like a camera fault (rather than user error). Also if you ever tried changing project frame rate on the same RedDrive or Compact Flash card you'd get an error for that too (it's not possible). Most of the error messages are much better explained now in the release build of Build 15.

5. I've only ever seen a drop frame warning about once (gentle/normal handheld, quite long takes, on RedDrive back in the early pre-release days of Build 13) - simply retook the shot (in this respect, and with any unexpected error messages I treat it the same as I would a hair in the gate...be glad that it was spotted and simply do another take, no big deal. All cameras have faults (film cameras get hairs, scratches, develop unsteadiness/weave; video tape cameras can get drop frames too, the back focus can drift at will blah blah blah). One of the many great things about the Red camera is at least it tells you when it goes wrong so you can just do another take and get it right, rather than finding out in the edit that you've got loads of dropped frames, or hairs or scratches etc.

I'm sorry the camera didn't work out for you but I'm sure you realize the importance of having a DIT now (he probably could've troubleshot 90% of your problems, verified you were on a reliable firmware build...plus done little things like try to reinstall the firmware and re-format all the media which sometimes helps to iron out any kinks. Alternatively he could have even tried a more recent (but Beta) firmware to see if that ironed out any of your problems).

I hope you've found some of the trouble-shooting on this forum useful - we got there in the end (i.e. constructive trouble-shooting), but I certainly don't think the tone of your DP's original post helped us get there - it was kind of like going on a Mac forum and posting about how crap Macs are and how much better PCs are... guaranteed to raise the flames :devil:!! There's a right way & a wrong way about going about things and that unfortunately was the wrong way. In fact if there was an award ceremony for RedUser I'd certainly nominate that for "most inflammatory posting in a new thread category" lol :) Thanks for your part in helping to bring a bit more sanity to the proceedings.

[davidjakubovic]

Thank you very much, Dave. All good thoughts for sure. I am not that technical with the camera myself but I will make sure the DP and AC see all these good notes everyone came up with!

I will bring all of these ideas when we meet and go over the shoot with the rental house in a couple of weeks.

[David Wyatt]

Thank you very much, Dave. All good thoughts for sure. I am not that technical with the camera myself but I will make sure the DP and AC see all these good notes everyone came up with!

I will bring all of these ideas when we meet and go over the shoot with the rental house in a couple of weeks.

Good luck!