Cinetronic: the Elephant in the room - updated discussion

[Martin Stacey]

Well once again bringing my frustration into the public arena brought them out of the woodwork.

They claim that it shipped out early last week but the tracking information shows that it was requested for pick up this weekend. I simply replied that I'll believe it when I see it and that maybe it would be a better business practice if they stop selling items that they never had.

[Stew Cantrell]

I am just finally finishing up with a nightmare of a time dealing with Film Stuff.

After much research I was excited to finally purchase my Gen 2 monitor, and I ordered it. Unfortunately, after a few days (2-3) a money emergency came up and I was forced into the decision to cancel my order and get a refund for my purchase.

I emailed Chris right away and waited for a response. After hearing nothing for 2 days I called and left a voicemail and emailed again. Still no reply.
I emailed and called for over TWO WEEKS to no response, with my need for the refund growing worse every day, and finally after two weeks of constantly hounding the company for any sort of customer service I was given a response.

Chris emailed me the contact info of the accounting guy at Film Stuff and told me to contact him. This could have been sent to me 2 weeks prior easily, but I had to hound him with emails and calls constantly to get it.

 

After contacting the accounting guy, it took another week and a half to get the refund started and they have with held $300 from my order claiming that they will not refund their "Paypal processing charges". I did not see that policy anywhere listed on their website, so I don't know if that is even allowed, but I'm sure someone on here would know.

 

Anyways, the point of this is I was extremely frustrated with the complete lack of customer service from this company. For the amount of money I wanted to pay them I was treated extremely poorly. I had originally planned to purchase the gen 2 monitor once my situation was dealt with, but after being treated the way I was I have no intention on dealing with a company that treats a customer so poorly. This was the most frustrating experience with a company I may have ever had.

 

I do believe the monitors are great, but the only input I have on the issue is what happened to me.

[William Demeritt]

Just as a quick update, another operator confirmed this morning that 1920x1080@23.98PsF was undetected by the Gen 2. A Transvideo monitor on set confirmed the image was working with other display panels, but not the Gen 2. This was with a Sony F5 set to 23.98PsF (which is the only option with the Sony F5 apparently). The Alexa has the option to set the MON Out output to P or PsF, but the Sony F5 doesn't seem to have that functionality.

 

So as of yet, no firmware updates have addressed the PsF undetected issue. Cinetronic claims that 1920x1080@23.98PsF should be detected, as it's a "valid" SMPTE format, but an operator had a different experience this morning.

 

We should organize a camera test and format test to verify which formats and cameras the monitor will work with. Perhaps a visit to Clairmont?

[Brian Freesh]

Cinetronic claims that 1920x1080@23.98PsF should be detected, as it's a "valid" SMPTE format

 

I'd forgotten this.

 

I have shot twice with the F55, both times no signal detection on 1920x1080 23.98PsF. The second time was yesterday (I was prepared this time). The F55 only sends out a P signal if in 50fps or 59.94fps, and I confirmed I got a signal with those settings.

 

I sent this info to Chris. At the time he was aware that the Gen 2 sometimes took a signal from the F55 and sometimes not but did not know why. It's clearly stated in the manual that at 23.98 the F55 will only send out a PsF signal, and I sent him a copy of the page that has this information (65) for future reference. It's been clear for a while I think that PsF is the issue, not 720 PsF

 

The F5 has identical output settings (They are so similar the F5 uses the same manual)

 

It seems silly to me that the F5/F55 has this limitation on output settings. However, it also seems silly to me that the Gen 2 is the only monitor that cannot handle PsF. I'm not a software engineer, or hardware. I'm just the end user, so what do I know.

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

FYI: the level sensor is shipping

[William Demeritt]

That's great to hear, Jens! Everyone who ordered one, please feel free to chime in with when you receive it and your experiences with it so far? I'll keep it updated in the main post.

 

EDIT: Hmm, I guess I cannot keep the main post updated through editing as I'd hoped.

[Daniel Stilling DFF]

I am just finally finishing up with a nightmare of a time dealing with Film Stuff.

After much research I was excited to finally purchase my Gen 2 monitor, and I ordered it. Unfortunately, after a few days (2-3) a money emergency came up and I was forced into the decision to cancel my order and get a refund for my purchase.

I emailed Chris right away and waited for a response. After hearing nothing for 2 days I called and left a voicemail and emailed again. Still no reply.

I emailed and called for over TWO WEEKS to no response, with my need for the refund growing worse every day, and finally after two weeks of constantly hounding the company for any sort of customer service I was given a response.

Chris emailed me the contact info of the accounting guy at Film Stuff and told me to contact him. This could have been sent to me 2 weeks prior easily, but I had to hound him with emails and calls constantly to get it.

 

After contacting the accounting guy, it took another week and a half to get the refund started and they have with held $300 from my order claiming that they will not refund their "Paypal processing charges". I did not see that policy anywhere listed on their website, so I don't know if that is even allowed, but I'm sure someone on here would know.

 

Anyways, the point of this is I was extremely frustrated with the complete lack of customer service from this company. For the amount of money I wanted to pay them I was treated extremely poorly. I had originally planned to purchase the gen 2 monitor once my situation was dealt with, but after being treated the way I was I have no intention on dealing with a company that treats a customer so poorly. This was the most frustrating experience with a company I may have ever had.

 

I do believe the monitors are great, but the only input I have on the issue is what happened to me.

 

If you paid via Paypal, all they need to do is refund you through Paypal, and they will also get the fees refunded. I have done it myself.

[Jessica Lopez]

Was reading the thread, seems it's been a while since anyone has posted. Are there any firmware updates on the Cinetronic II with psf? The F65 was an issue for me yesterday. Was really disappointed to find out that I need another Redbyte after switching over to an HD setup.

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

Unfortunately not yet, but this Is for me the only thing that's left to be done and hopefully soon.

[Richard James Lewis]

I'm getting to the point where I kind of regret buying the Gen2 in all honesty.

There is still a lot of work to be done to this monitor to make me happy using it daily. There always seems to be something buggy about it whenever I put it on the rig and I'm tired of being a guinea pig. I've spoken with other ops who feel the same and still have problems daily.

Chris has usually been very helpful with issues and responded quickly, although the whole thing has been going on for a very long time now, and it gets frustrating. These levels have been shipping for almost a month and I still don't have one because of one reason or another. It was bought and paid for many moons ago.

Admittedly the Cinetronic was better than the first 1000nit Transvideo e-SBL, but now the X-SBL is around I can see no real reason to go with the Cinetronic anymore.

The Transivdeo is in my opinion a better weight. With a battery on the back of the Cinetronic the yoke mount is redundant as it is no longer weighted correctly.

The Transvideos firmware is solid, it accepts anything you can throw at it and its bug free. Lots of extra features that have been designed and implemented over the last few years.

Jacques is very attentive and the service is excellent. Software updates were written for me in a matter of days and sent over.

On the plus side the Cinetronic has a slightly better AR coating, is probably better water resistant, and the viewing angle is more forgiving. The 2000nits on the Transvideo seems to punch through the extra reflection issues. encountered with the 1000nit version.

The Cinetronic will probably just sit in the case and collect dust now sadly.

Rick.

Edited November 17, 2013 by Richard James Lewis

[Iain Baird]

I'm hopeful that with the Level sorted and shipping (although I haven't seen mine yet) that Chris will have time to refocus his efforts on the operating system and PSF compatibility issues. My feeling is that the most important feature of a Steadicam monitor is the view ability of the image, and Cinetronic is the best that I've seen in this department. But the points won in the viewable comparison will be lost if the other features don't deliver. If they are not addressed soon then I too may find myself regretting the purchase. I want Chris to succeed but I also require my equipment to be able to handle all the cameras that I might encounter and if it can't I'll have to find something that does.

 

IB

[William Demeritt]

If the PsF issue is a major dealbreaker for you, I wanted to share a small workaround that's tedious but works.

 

If you have a Decimator 2 and have a way to power it from or near the monitor, get yourself a short HDMI cable. Feed HD-SDI into the Decimator 2, and run HDMI to the HDMI input on the gen 2. The Decimator 2's scaling feature will "fix" scale the image to progressive, and the monitor will give you an HD image.

 

Not idea, but I tested it with an Alexa set to PsF about a week ago, and it gave me an image.

 

NOTE: You must connect the Decimator 2 to a computer via USB and enable the scaling feature in the Decimator Control Panel software that's available here:

 

http://decimator.com/DOWNLOADS/DOWNLOADS.html

 

Requires a Windows computer, blah blah.

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

or as mentioned by me before an HD-SDI cross converter should do the trick as well....

[Iain Baird]

If the PsF issue is a major dealbreaker for you, I wanted to share a small workaround that's tedious but works.

 

If you have a Decimator 2 and have a way to power it from or near the monitor, get yourself a short HDMI cable. Feed HD-SDI into the Decimator 2, and run HDMI to the HDMI input on the gen 2. The Decimator 2's scaling feature will "fix" scale the image to progressive, and the monitor will give you an HD image.

 

Not idea, but I tested it with an Alexa set to PsF about a week ago, and it gave me an image.

 

NOTE: You must connect the Decimator 2 to a computer via USB and enable the scaling feature in the Decimator Control Panel software that's available here:

 

http://decimator.com/DOWNLOADS/DOWNLOADS.html

 

Requires a Windows computer, blah blah.

 

 

or as mentioned by me before an HD-SDI cross converter should do the trick as well....

 

I have a Hyperdeck Shuttle that will cross convert an HD-SDI signal to an HDMI signal, but regardless you shouldn't NEED a workaround with a professional monitor

 

IB

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

Agreed, let's hope it gets fixed soon...