For anyone who hasn’t seen it yet there is a new camera on the market called “The Red Camera” http://www.red.com/cameras. It is suppose to allow you to shoot film like quality directly to a Compact Flash card with the camera package being Less than $20,000 however for the location sound mixer this camera is a nightmare. It has been released before all the bugs has been worked out. Below is what Scott Farr a camera op and location sound mixer had to say about it :
“Camera at this stage WILL NOT record audio.
Camera at this stage has TIMECODE drift problems
Camera at this stage only records to CF cards and biggest RED card is 8GB which is about 8 minutes of record time.
Camera at this stage doesnt record in full 4K, it uses the RED ONE software to uprez.
Camera at this stage will only work with RED ONE post software which is still in beta and crashes, only runs on windows.
ALL of the RED ONE brand cables (audio, timecode, USB, power, etc.) are 3X the price they need to be. Buyer beware.
AUDIO IN to the Red One is four TA3 female connectors
TIMECODE I/O is a standard LEMO 5pin
AUDIO OUT is a single TA5 female connector
Current firmware does not unlock the AUDIO and the TIMECODE is unstable. When activated, the AUDIO should record at 24bit, 48Khz on each of the four tracks.
this camera will leave you RED in the face.”
On the Jeff Wexler Discussion Group Jwsound.net a mixer who is shooting with this camera asked for advice about using timecode with this camera and the general response was use a dummy slate and don’t use the camera timecode until they fix all the problems here was my response.
“Yes if the timecode is known to drift and be inaccurate and since no one has any experience with the camera. I won’t mess with it at all with a dummy slate and syncing to the clap you know things will work. Since the camera is so new I bet the camera crew has no or very limited experience with the camera since it just started shipping last week. I would prefer to stay away from the camera and camera crew as much as possible so that they can figure out all the problems I am sure they will have. Unless you can run some extensive tests before you shot including the post production work flow just follow KISS. Keep it simple until the camera has all the bugs worked out of it .”
Fellow Mixers Beware of this camera and make sure you run extensive tests before your production starts.
Pro Location Sound LLC 