RedMote - Please Red

[Andrae Palmer]

Our REDmote is working very well... experience does vary... from what was written on the boards I thought I would never get it to work on a crane. Sorry to hear so many others are having problems though... albeit I think some of that is because of the local/remote feature being not easily interpretable.

[Tim Sutherland]

We have 2 redmotes working just fine. Took a couple of tries to pair the first time and pairs perfectly every time now. It has ne we been on the back of the camera, maybe that's why it works wirelessly so well. Range is about 30 ft on stage. Our third had a non working enter button and is at red right now.

Tim

[SeanBrown]

I had a redmote brand new come broken and they sent me a new one as I sent the broken one back and it works perfect. I get around 6-10 feet as well but not all the time. I used to with the epic and a very early build get at least 30 feet away from the camera. Can we bring that kind of range back.

[Justin Marx]

Mine works.... Sometimes.. I would never rely on it though.. I think the ability to wire the REDmote would be HUGE until they solve the wireless issue. Wireless is just to finicky. It's a frigging awesome concept, and I will be extremely happy when it does work more than 60% of the time.

[jimhare]

Mine works great. Don't have a need to be far from the camera. Used it about 8 feet from the camera and never missed a beat on a two hour shoot.

[Jackson Yeung]

I've experienced piss-poor performance with the RedMote.

The Display is not always accurate, I cannot get IN/OUT of playback without looking at the EVF or LCD.
Battery is disappointing.

It slows down the camera.. I've had to (deliberately) turn off the RedMote to get smoother performance out of the EPIC.

[Michael Hastings]

Mine works.... Sometimes.. I would never rely on it though.. I think the ability to wire the REDmote would be HUGE until they solve the wireless issue. Wireless is just to finicky. It's a frigging awesome concept, and I will be extremely happy when it does work more than 60% of the time.

Well, Stuart knows I have been asking for remote control of Red Cameras (and then griping about the lack of it :-) ) since NAB2008. I thought we had it licked when they came out with the REDMOTE for Epic, but the unreliability of wireless is a setback. A wired option would go a long way toward a reliable solution. Seems like it would have been really easy to incorporate wired at the design stage, but still seems pretty straightforward to implement using the contacts on the rear of the camera and the redmote (and it would sure simplify my life on the underwater housing side :-) ).

But more importantly, this is the kind of thing that gives RED cameras a bad name because any kind of reliability issues seem to get magnified - and a rapid fix before it becomes ingrained in the production community would seem to me to be important and a priority. With no good options right now, making a cable to extend those contacts would probably go a long way toward keeping people happy.

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

My REDmote arrives tomorrow. Until then, I'll be in the car :-)

OK OK a couple of thoughts...

1. Wired option. Yes! Even never having used it, yes.

2. The communication protocol - wired or wireless - with the camera may have a few tricks and gotchas, but it's a long way from rocket science. Pretty straightforward stuff. This is exactly the kind of gadget that third party manufacturers could innovate with. There's no law saying that only RED can make REDmote-type devices... let's see what kind of REDmote alternative someone like Element Technica or Viewfactor can come up with. I'd personally like to see an 'analogue' REDmote; a larger box with nice clunky knobs for direct control of the basics: iris, shutter, ISO, frame rate. I seriously dislike poking about in menus for those. Direct control, just like good old mechanical cameras!

Mike

[Eric Haase]

Well, Stuart knows I have been asking for remote control of Red Cameras (and then griping about the lack of it :-) ) since NAB2008. I thought we had it licked when they came out with the REDMOTE for Epic, but the unreliability of wireless is a setback. A wired option would go a long way toward a reliable solution. Seems like it would have been really easy to incorporate wired at the design stage, but still seems pretty straightforward to implement using the contacts on the rear of the camera and the redmote (and it would sure simplify my life on the underwater housing side :-) ).

But more importantly, this is the kind of thing that gives RED cameras a bad name because any kind of reliability issues seem to get magnified - and a rapid fix before it becomes ingrained in the production community would seem to me to be important and a priority. With no good options right now, making a cable to extend those contacts would probably go a long way toward keeping people happy.

I agree that the unreliability of gear has hurt RED's reputation quite a bit- from the early days of the RED One all the way through these issues with the Redmote. It's a shame that the redmote is so unreliable not only for lack of usability but for the fact that a lot of people perceive the camera system to be inferior and unreliable based on one piece of gear (rightly so in my mind). If you're going to make something and sell it as part of a professional production tool, make sure it works reliably. If I performed my job as reliably as the redmote performed its job I would be fired and never hired again by anyone. As cinematographers we have to be able to rely on our gear to perform as expected as frequently as possible. There are too many other variables during production that we have to deal with. The redmote is quickly gaining the reputation of being a "piece of junk" due to it's reliability, and likely hurting the perception of the camera system. I think it's good for RED to know this so they can choose to act (or not).

[Justin Marx]

Do I need to fill out a support ticket for the REDMOTE working poorly?