Posting mid/end shot - Records nothing

[PaulClements]

Hi all,

Anyone had problems on B17 with the camera seemingly recording and then when hitting the record button to stop or even in the middle of the shot the camera hangs on Post and nothing has recorded?

Just lost take 12 of a shot and it was THE take... v embarrassing. As far as I can see either B17 or the upgrade has made the camera unstable. Losing a shot when it says is recording is probably the worst thing possible for a camera.

I'll post the log files etc later this wkend.

Paul

[Curran Giddens]

Are you still on that Beta Build 17 (the one just before the Release Build) or are you on the Release Build?

[PaulClements]

Release build. Put on by Red Europe when the upgrade was done. Had another build put on since as well to try to improve. Something seems to have gone wrong somewhere. Reliability of these cameras seems to have gone downhill since the upgrade somewhat. Going to go back to build 16 after today and try that. But that isn't good enough. I couldn't care less about snazzy functions as long as the camera can shoot and not lose shots or reboot mid shot. The Beta build seemed more reliable, unless it was something hardware in the upgrade that has caused the issues.

Paul

[Curran Giddens]

People are also having the reboot issue with Build 16. Haven't heard of anyone having any issues with Beta Build 17 though. But that may just be because nobody is using that particular build.

[A. Clint Litton]

Just finished working as Red Tech on a feature, shooting on Build 16 with anamorphics, and we experienced the same problem a small handful of times. It first occurred in conjunction with a car-rig shot. Timecode was progressing fine on the monitor throughout the take, no reports of dropped frames, but the camera would hang during the "post" process. We swapped out drives, drive cables, etc., but the problem occurred again, so we figured it was independent of the drives/cables. Also, we were using the ET iso-drive mount, though I would wager there were other sources of vibration being relayed to the drive. (note: we weren't opting for CF cards due to the setup...extremely long takes, no support for 16gb cards on B16.) All the same, there were never any signs of dropped frames.

A few weeks later, the "post" hang occurred during a stationary shot, so I suppose it may not necessarily have been a vibration issue in the first place. From what I recall, on one shot the camera recorded the first 25-30 seconds of the take before it crapped out...on at least one other, the camera generated the clip folder, but there were no files generated inside the folder.

To compensate, we tried to start/stop recording as frequently as possible on the longer rolls, if only to limit how much time/performance was lost due to one of these recording errors. Out of curiosity, Paul, were your takes particularly lengthy (>10 minutes)? Either way, it doesn't make the phenomenon any easier to accept. Imagine shooting a sit-down interview and losing a 45-minute shot...scary.

That said, despite these few isolated incidences and some minor booting headaches, the cameras (3 in all, at times) performed very well in some really crappy environments. I was honestly expecting more problems.

Bottom line, I hope some of these issues can get resolved, as I truly want people to consider shooting Red without having to weigh it against ANY issues of reliability. It doesn't diminish my esteem of the camera or what it's capable of doing, but it does add caution to the mix (not the worst thing, perhaps).

Crossing my fingers that Build 18 is flawless upon release...not really expecting that, but hey, a fella can dream, can't he?

[David Wyatt]

Hi Paul,

I've heard of similar problems with long takes on Release Build 17 and agree it doesn't do the Red camera much good PR if the post problem occurs on "THE take" (especially when it's a long scene and it's a tight schedule!). I've read lots of reports from people on these boards that Beta Build 18 is actually more stable than Release Build 17, although of course Red doesn't condone anyone using a Beta Build on a professional shoot. I've not heard of the post problem occurring on Beta Build 18 so far, but that may of course be because not many people are using it yet on the rough & tumble of proper, professional shoots. It may well be heresy to suggest it, but if the problem keeps happening for you it might be an idea to try Build 18 (or maybe have your back-up camera loaded with 18?) If that seems a bit too risky you could maybe try cycling back to Release Build 16 (I don't know if you ever encountered similar problems with that build?). Personally I can't wait for 18 to come out of Beta, because I'm not that confident about 17 and it's also got a couple of really annoying, sloppy bugs.

[David Wyatt]

Had a similar problem happen today - long take (between 5 & 10 minutes), Red Drive, Release Build 17 - the camera dropped a frame and then was just stuck in record (hitting the record button wouldn't stop it recording - we had to power it down eventually when it wouldn't stop recording). I think there was footage up to the point the frame dropped. The camera with the fault was slaved with a Timecode cable to another Red (don't know if that has any impact?). Build 17 really is one of the most unreliable "Release Builds" so far...

[PaulClements]

That's a different problem David. I've seen that once or twice, thankfully it seems rare enough and probably is something to do with long takes with Max setting or external factors. Might be worth shooting with Max Settings turned off on very long takes, a lot of media won't always sustain a peak write rate for very long periods no matter how good it is.

With the above problem however all you get on the RedDrive is a 64kb R3D file without QT's. You get none of the footage up until the problem appears to arise. Before B17 I'm sure the above problem would've been reported as an error and been more obvious. I don't recall seeing the big red circle with white x whilst using B17. It's almost like because the error doesn't appear we continue to shoot regardless and only realise the error has occured after the matter - At least if it happens on record it's easy enough to reset before we roll rather than believing we have the perfect take only to discover we don't.

Anyway thankfully it's only on the one camera, everything else seems stable. I'm on it this week so hoping to have it resolved in the next couple of days if an obvious problem is discovered I'll report it.

Cheers
Paul

[Adam Sampson]

Hi Everyone- I am having a similar issue with my Red, 3363. I shot for a two weeks for Showtime and had no issue at all, I am on the same RB17 and have changed absolutely nothing- but today and yesterday my Red had boot hangs and post hangs, plus it would completely freeze during a shot or set up. The only way to reboot was to disconnect power (occurred with both AC and 4 diff batteries). The reboots were successful about 40% of the time. I had a record of rebooting 4 times before the camera booted completely. Very embarrassing and totally convinced the clients to not shoot Red on anything critical or time sensitive- so nothing. They loved the look of the images but the reliability and time factors for booting and hanging drove them away rapidly.

Cheers-
-Adam

[Bertland Imai]

Just to reiterate what everyone else has been saying, I had the same 'Post' problem occur with longer shots this past weekend? Has anyone figured out what the issue might be? We were shooting on battery power when the problems occurred and continued to occur. We then switched to AC power and didn't experience any issues thereafter. Could it be possibly that the power from the battery itself is unstable, causing fluctuations when the camera is drawing power thus causing it to 'hang'? I don't know what technology is used for the batteries (NiMH? Li-Ion?) but perhaps they're prone to memory effects that causes a power dump even though it still reads a good charge? This is all speculation of course, based on the fact that we didn't have issues when using the AC adapter but saw it frequently when using the batteries.

I would love to get to the bottom of this and fully understand it rather than pawning it off as a 'build' issue so if you all have any ideas, keep them coming!