RedMote - Please Red

[brett mayfield]

Unfortunately we were dealing with someone who could simply receive the items and they had no knowledge or details of testing etc. I wish i had answers (actually i wish they had answers) then and now but ultimately i dont.

at the same time i brought in a cable that was missing the rear seat on the 90 deg bracket and was charged $240. the cable was fine, it just needed a replacement hexagonal piece of metal, but red wanted to repair the whole cable. after i refused the "repair" (read: replacement) i was charged $100 for them to return the cable to me (i was picking it up from the studios). Apparently it was for diagnosing (which not only had i already done "look, this metal piece is gone, can i get another?" but was an obvious problem and took nothing more than eyeballing). i never received answers to my questions of "why?' for anything. i only learned where to send it and how much it would cost.

to me there are a lot of things that seem like they never went through testing outside of those who are already hardcore red users and dont look back. like an sdi/bnc port thats nearly impossible to get cables in and out of, especially if the redmote is attached.

[Ryan De Franco]

to me there are a lot of things that seem like they never went through testing outside of those who are already hardcore red users and dont look back. like an sdi/bnc port thats nearly impossible to get cables in and out of, especially if the redmote is attached.

This is the glory and the shame of Red ownership, you have a camera that makes beautiful images but kicks you in the shins and forces you to buy things like an SDI elbow...

for dealing with this problem



for dealing with all problems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha

[brett mayfield]

oh we all know and feel it. c'est la red.
and i love my elbows, but i gotta get those on and off too, haha!

[George Hupka]

Just experienced the "enter" problem on my Redmote, which is all of a month and a half old and has probably been actively used for about a week total.

[Petri Teittinen]

I don't quite understand why REDMOTE connectivity seems to be such a random affair. Last night I used the remote for half an hour straight without a single disconnect. Today, in exactly the same conditions, REDMOTE dropped out after 2 minutes of use and the only way to restore the connection was to reboot both the remote and the camera. This is not the kind of reliability one expects from professional gear.

[Frazier Nivens]

Still wishing for a Redmote wired connection but looks like its not happening. Would put an end to most folks problems and perfect for jib cranes.

[Jason Wingrove]

My Redmote was giving me about 8ft reception, as instructed by red I files a support ticket, Red freighted my Epic from Australia for free and have replaced the Redlink antennae. They'll of course ship it back at their cost too. turnaround is about 10 days. Presuming it will be firing on all cylinders but will give a full heads up when i see Epic #22 again pre NAB.

So if your not getting great TX distance just ping Red, they want you to be happy.

[Les C.]

My Redmote was giving me about 8ft reception, as instructed by red I files a support ticket, Red freighted my Epic from Australia for free and have replaced the Redlink antennae. They'll of course ship it back at their cost too. turnaround is about 10 days. Presuming it will be firing on all cylinders but will give a full heads up when i see Epic #22 again pre NAB.

So if your not getting great TX distance just ping Red, they want you to be happy.

Now that's great customer service! I can deal with problems as long as the customer service is like that!

[Mark Pugh]

I'm still waiting to hear of someone who's had their Redmote serviced, or replaced, and can now use it reliably, from a modest distance, ALL DAY, on a real film set, as a professional tool.
I'd like to see it demonstrated in the Red booth at NAB, also.
There have been far more sightings of UFOs lately, than of Redmote being used happily all day without tiresome reconnection procedures.

The first time I used a Redmote remotely, on a technocrane, it was hopeless.
Now i use it docked to the camera, to produce a beep on Recording and stopping.
If I'd tried to keep using it off camera, it would have been thrown and smashed long ago.

I encourage anyone who needs remote start/ stop functionality to use one of the wired solutions available out there, if it fills needs e.g. working on a crane.
From what I see, Red have a policy against producing a wired solution, and I'd guess it's because a long cable running across a set, or device wired to the CPU could destroy the CPU if damaged while connected.
It would only be a week or two, and Red would have to deal with a camera who's wired Redmote was dropped in a puddle of water.

[Peter Stelzhammer]

in our case: it definitely works a better on the latest firmware (updated from 2.0.5 to 3.0.0 about two weeks ago)… but it's still not at a point where I'd call it reliable enough for whole-shooting-day action. And I'm talking only short-distance here - we were using it at a maximum distance of like 1.5 to 2 meters. With 2.0.5 it was working like 1 out of 3 times after being pulled from the EPIC dock. With 3.0.0 it is working like 2 out of 3 times, I'd say we're at 75% working chance now - thats still not 100% like it should be… by not working I mean not establishing a quick auto-connection after being pulled. If I manually dial in our EPIC it works sometimes - but I don't really have the time to do that on set when the Cam is shouldered for immediate shooting. I also don't have the time for a reboot or docking & un-docking again (which usually fixes the connection loss)… As for troubleshooting - jep, the mote is tethered correctly, the camera has a name, the mote is charged and so on.

Waiting for the next firmware release to see what happens. Right now we use it as long as it works, in that process it gets docked & un-docked as needed. And sometimes the auto-reconnect after undocking it just don't work… at that point we stop using it until we have the time to look into the issue - which is not often the case. "Reliable" would mean that the auto-reconnect after pulling the mote will work every single time - that's just not the case right now, we're at like 70% but not at 100%…

Don't know the experience of other users in this case… would be good to have more real-world opinions.
As for the "Hardware" itself -> no problems with the buttons and stuff, from that point our unit is solid from day one.