RED malfunction... any similar experience?

[Jad Beyrouthy]

I was shooting a short on RED, and as soon as we were prepping the cam we realized that we had no audio signal, i tried changing my cables my mics and corrected the sound preferences in the cam menu but the problem was never solved. another problem appeared when i rolled my first shot (without sound/ recording on a separate recorder) that each take (varying from 5 to 30 seconds) would playback in a couple of frames, i was shooting on 320 iso, 180 degree shutter, 25 frames per second and with varispeed off. i loaded the rushes and got the same result (playback in a couple of frames).

i had to shoot the scene without audio while recording on a separate recorder, and turning on varispeed on 25fps in order to playback normally the footage until the backup cam arrived.

the first RED had the new firmware (build 30).

any similar experiences? Tips? Trick?

thanks in advance

[Chris Dalton]

a few things to do when you have a major issue like this. First of all for no audio, make sure that you are not in Varispeed mode. This will disable your audio. Also make sure that you have set up the record enable to line or mic, and that you have your headphone mix set to hear your audio. Next if you are sure your settings are correct and you don't have a faulty cable go to the standard Red Glitch Fix. First power down the camera, wait a few seconds and start it back up. Think of it like a crashing PC when it does that sort of stuff. next if all else fails, reload the firmware. this can be downloaded from www.Red.com/support find your Build number (eg. 30.5.0) and follow the instructions to put it on an SD Card (1gig or smaller only). This is the Big Fix before things get sent back to Red for repair. Make sure to do a Black Balance after reloading the Firmware or updating it. I hope this helps.