CF Module Corrupted Footage

[intoxicated.demons]

Hi there,

Over the weekend I shot a music video on the RED rented from a very well known rental house here in LA.

When we first started downloading the footage, we ended up getting green screens and codec errors. Our AC, who was from the rental house, insisted that the footage was fine because all the files were showing up, and that the reason we weren't seeing the footage was because our laptops weren't G5s with dual core processors...

On Monday, when we returned the equipment, I asked the AC if he could check the status of the footage on their G5s with dual core processors.

Turns out it didn't play on there either.

Looking though, it turned out most of the footage was corrupted. I sent stills of it to RED and they informed me that because it was a problem with the CF reader/writer, it meant the module on the camera we rented from needed to be replaced and that the corruption was burned in.

I'm writing here to see if anyone knows of any way to save this footage. A program? A codec? ANYTHING.

We're students who poured our hearts and souls into this and we're looking for any way to save this.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[jbeale]

Sorry to hear about that situation, it sounds like pretty bad news. What format, resolution & frame rate did you use? Just out of curiosity, was this using the Red brand CF cards, or a different brand? Did you try playing the files back in-camera? Was the problem confirmed to be the CF card writer on the camera, or the CF card reader you used to get the files into your laptop?

[intoxicated.demons]

Hi there,

We were shooting 2k at 24 frames for most of the shoot, but we also did some high speed stuff as well. We were using RED brand cards.

We played some of the stuff back in camera and it looked fine, but on the third, we were getting noticeable playback issues.

According to RED, based on the stills I showed them of the corrupted footage, the problem is with the CF module in the camera.

Right now, I just have the footage on a hard drive and I'm looking for anyone who may know of a program or some kind of patch that can salvage these files.

[Sam Winzar]

You'll find that it's specific frames that are triggering the errors and stop you from processing the footage. Those frames have no chance of being recovered but you can try this script that Deanan gave me to try and get something useable out of the footage (how useable depends on how many of these killer frames you have).

#!/bin/bash
for ((i=0;i<=[LAST FRAME];i+=1)); do
echo $i
REDline -i [INPUT FILE] -o [OUTPUT FILE] -w 1 -R 2 -s $i -e $i -V $i
done

Replace the bits in brackets with ones that apply to your clip. This will go through and process each frame individually that way the killer frames wont interfere with the rest of the footage.

Put in a support ticket with Red if you need any further help. They do a great job and that's what they're there for.

[Nick Gardner]

Do the proxies work?

[intoxicated.demons]

The problem is that most of the footage has kill frames every couple of seconds and so the footage is completely unusable.

Isn't there any kind of program that can fix this?

[Deanan]

Can you check the cards again? We've seen this problem happen with bad card readers on the PC/Mac side and also with media not being ejected properly.

Also, sometimes you can skip the error by using a lower quality mode in redcine (ie. half medium instead of half high) .

What brand of card reader were you using?

[intoxicated.demons]

The cards were already returned to the rental house and have probably been wiped by now. I'm viewing the transferred footage on an external drive now.

Only Red Alert plays the files for me and even then most of them don't play.

I believe we used a Lexar reader.

[Kenn Christenson]

G5s can't play Red footage, directly - don't you need Intel Macs? Did the footage look good on-set, played back through the camera?

[intoxicated.demons]

On the last day of shooting, we were having playback errors. That's when we switched to hard drive instead of cards. The hard drive footage is fine, it's the card footage that's corrupted. Does anyone have a fix for this?

[Ramesh Jai]

I can't help in any way but I really feel your pain. So sorry.

[Giancarlo Bianchi]

Hi there,

Over the weekend I shot a music video on the RED rented from a very well known rental house here in LA.

When we first started downloading the footage, we ended up getting green screens and codec errors. Our AC, who was from the rental house, insisted that the footage was fine because all the files were showing up, and that the reason we weren't seeing the footage was because our laptops weren't G5s with dual core processors...

On Monday, when we returned the equipment, I asked the AC if he could check the status of the footage on their G5s with dual core processors.

Turns out it didn't play on there either.

Looking though, it turned out most of the footage was corrupted. I sent stills of it to RED and they informed me that because it was a problem with the CF reader/writer, it meant the module on the camera we rented from needed to be replaced and that the corruption was burned in.

I'm writing here to see if anyone knows of any way to save this footage. A program? A codec? ANYTHING.

We're students who poured our hearts and souls into this and we're looking for any way to save this.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

The only advice I could give you is to reshoot... Did you have any insurance on the shot?
Anyway, it was the rental house`s AC who made the biggest mistake, assuring you on set that in was a normal thing going on with the footage. If he had told you to switch to raid, then you could have had a reshoot, and not "loosing" any footage.
It`s always hard to reshoot, but I`ll seek a way for the rental house to take the responsibility on this one.

Good Luck!