Long Clips

[Gregory Leno]

I have a series of concerts to record in Europe next month and we will need a wide shot in 4k running for the whole concert. This will result in clips that are at least 1-2 hrs long on the RED drive.
Are there any issues that come up in recording or post when there is that long of a take/clip?

Thanks,

Greg

[Frank Mirbach]

We´ve been part of a shooting with 5 Red´s on a live concert and recorded non stop onto the Red Drives until they only had about 2 % left. It worked well, only some minor dropped frames. I haven´t been involved in postpro directly, but as far as I know, they had no problems with the clips at all.

Frank

[Matthew Verkler]

One "feature" of Red footage files is that the .R3D's are no bigger than 2 GB. If a clip goes longer than that, successive .R3D's are created to form "one clip". If there is any disk problem or cable problem or anything like that (I've never had a problem), then the most damage it could do would be to a 2GB chunk, which is just a little over a minute. If everything was being made into one big file, and there was a problem, goodbye to the whole thing. Red doesn't have this problem.

As for shooting concerts, check out some of the threads on the topic - you will probably want to sound shield the drive somehow, even with a blanket or something like that, to prevent dropped frames from sounds of certain frequencies and sound levels. CF cards don't have this problem, but if you shield them, Red drives should be fine. If you can test during rehearsals or sound checks, all the better.

Matthew Verkler

[James Press]

Gregory,

We typically shoot between 1-2 hours non-stop and have no problems. If I get the chance I try to change drives after about an hour, just to be safe, but have had no problems going up to 2 hours.

I've also been on shoots with 5 cameras filming concerts, and they've similarly had no problems. Just look after those drives and download ASAP afterwards!

James

[Gregory Leno]

Thanks guys. Very reassuring.

I knew about the clips being segmented but wasn't sure if over long periods of time issues would come up.

Sounds like things hold together very well.


Greg

[Brook Willard]

I recommend disabling QuickTime proxies on long shots like that. I find that most cut-action crashes that eat footage tend to happen while writing the proxies. Turn them off... better chance of success.

[Gregory Leno]

I recommend disabling QuickTime proxies on long shots like that. I find that most cut-action crashes that eat footage tend to happen while writing the proxies. Turn them off... better chance of success.

Thanks Brook,

I Should have paid attention earlier to this. I just had this happen. Fortunately it happened on a rehearsal shot. (I'm shooting the rehearsals as well)
Camera froze while writing the proxies.... not good.

Anything else I need to watch for?


Greg

[Cüneyt Kaya]

an audio codec error can ruin all, record the audio seperatly and disable the channels

[Gregory Leno]

an audio codec error can ruin all, record the audio seperatly and disable the channels

Had this happen as well. Fortunately we are recording the audio separately.

Does build 18 help this? We're on 17 now.


Greg

[Radim Schreiber]

any way to get longer shot than what fits on a RED drive? Hacking drive and adding larger hard drives? Feeding footage directly to computer? I guess one could do that with HD-SDI, but than you loose ability to edit raw and get only full HD.

[Andrew M.]

When you do get audio codec error, are you loosing all long clip or just 2GB chunk?
Do you have to restart camera?

[James Press]

We use all 4 audio channels and have not had 1 failure/crash in at least 15 (>2hr) shoots--possibly we are lucky, but just our experience. Also, I agree with Brook about not posting the QT proxies.

[Gregory Leno]

We use all 4 audio channels and have not had 1 failure/crash in at least 15 (>2hr) shoots--possibly we are lucky, but just our experience. Also, I agree with Brook about not posting the QT proxies.

I wish I could be as fortunate.
I'm still on build 17 and it happened again today about 4 times. Then went for about an hour with no problems. I really wish we could get to the bottom of this, its really getting frustrating.
So again, does anyone know if build 18 addresses this problem at all ?

Greg

[jimhare]

I thought you could still get AUDIO CODEC ERRORS even if you didn't have any audio channels enabled. Anyone know otherwise for sure?

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Did a few helicopter shots that were quite long. One was ended because the battery got bumped off the cradle.

Didn´t matter. The shot was fine.

Jochen

[Henk van den Doel]

We've experienced audio codec errors with audio not enabled. We didn't get the camera working properly again (not even a few days later back in the office), until we emptied the REDdrive. Then all of a sudden the camera worked fine again, and we didn't encounter any more audio codec errors after that. It did not make any sense. But maybe it would be a good idea to have a few spare REDdrives around so you can swap easily if necessary..

[James Press]

Gregory- sorry I don't know if Build 18 addresses this (we're still running 17) but I agree it would be great to know.