Cinetronic Firmware Update not Working. Anyone got it to work on a windows 7? machine??

[William Demeritt]

I can't without a proper signal compatibility.

 

It is a must for me and will decide future purchases.

 

It already has impacted my purchase decisions now and in the future.

[Louis Puli SOC]

Hi William

Me to .I have a Cinetronic 1and love it but I am not upgrading for a while .

[chris bangma]

All kind of makes me wonder why I even put any effort into this... Guess the indication is there that I shouldnt put any more in...

[mike skipp]

Ditto

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

Chris, I can understand your frustration and believe me I appreciate all the effort you guys put into this project,

 

BUT,

 

"We" the customers, have been promised certain features and one of those features is signal compatibility. There is no reason that any "cheap" hd-sdi monitor off ebay will accept PSF and yours does not.

 

I think most of us have been very patient and if You would be a "normal" company, I would have returned my Gen 2 after one week asked for my money back, because it was and is not working as advertised.

 

"We" understand that you have limited resources, all I'm asking for is communication and a timeline, I'm even willing to spent/invest more money, for a new board, if necessary.

 

Again, I appreciate the effort.

[chris bangma]

At this point, the timeframe is never. With all the negativity, and no sales, I cannot see putting any more time or effort or money into this.

[GrantCulwell]

Chris,

 

I am not currently one of your customers but like many other ops on this site, could be considered a potential customer. However, after reading many of your responses to negative criticism over the past year, it would be hard for me to make the choice to invest my money into your company. Do you honestly not understand why so many are upset? Whenever my equipment has failed me on set, it makes me look unprofessional, slows production up, and risks loosing a client. On this thread and others, I've seen time and time again my operator colleagues express concerns and frustration (some more tactfully than others), only to see you eventually reach a breaking point and insult your client base, blaming them for so must negativity and whining that it wasn't worth your efforts. If I had spent what many others have, only to receive a monitor way later than promised, with programming issues, and customer support that can't always be counted on, I'd be very vocal in my frustrations too. Instead of complaining about unhappy customers (again, who spent a lot of money), have you considered apologizing and giving a solid timeline (that you stick to religiously) on resolving the issues? You may have done this already; I cannot claim to have read every one of your posts.

 

I am only stating these things to inform you of how you have presented yourself to the potential customer market here on the forum.

 

When the monitor works, I've heard many outstanding compliments from ops in the field and here on this forum. Whatever you decided to do with your business, I wish you all the best.

[mike skipp]

Like you say Grant. you Just Dont Know!

[chris bangma]

Honestly its hard to give people timelines when you cant get them from the engineers who do the work for you. Things take longer than expected, and dont always go as planned. Some problems you just dont find until you have 100+ monitors in the field, since these things never surface in testing. Its kind of like asking a steadicam operator to commit to being able to do any shot in 2 takes. Sometimes you just do not know what is involved until you try it.

 

Development of this monitor has taken 4-5 times the amount of time and money than what was originally planned. Maybe the prudent thing would have been to pull the plug a year ago when it looked like there was no point continuing, but we decided to go forward. Steadicam wasnt built in a day, look at the number of years it took to get to where it is today. Operators are not created in a day either, just look at the amount of mistakes that need to be made, to learn and become a better operator. Yet people expect a new product to function perfectly overnight, never have an issue and for it to please everyone. We have tried to do the best we can with this.

 

I am sure as operators, you wouldnt be too quick to work for a DP who comments after every shot that you could have done better, or some other operator is far better than you. I am sure you would politely pass at the next opportunity to work for this person. Yet it is ok to continually bitch and complain about a company. People fail to realize a company is based on people, and their passion to create a product. If you take away their passion, what incentive do they have anymore?

 

I have over 20 years experience on set, and my partner Mike has over 30 years experience building equipment for the film business. We came together to build a better product for the guys who actually use it. We are very familiar with how things need to work on set, and what the experience is on set, and the kind of pressure that can be there. We have tried to think of everything to make the product better for the end user, but it is hard to cover every scenario. We are committed to making the best product we can, and making everyone happy. Just keep in mind that sometimes it doesnt happen overnight, just as Rome wasnt built in a day.

[Daniel Stilling DFF]

I am a potential costumer that has been on the fence about buying your monitor. The only reason I haven't done so is not the monitor itself, and not even the shortcomings, but the way you respond to the requests for making your product better/appropriate/fixing the problems.

Now with these statements you made my decision very easy, and you might be making existing costumers even less happy...

I understand it's not an easy task to make the best monitors out there, but blaming your costumers that paid top dollar for your lack of will to keep going is hardly the way to go...

[Brian Freesh]

Mike, Chris,

 

I am a customer, but I also 'do not know' and that's the real problem.

 

I don't think you give your customer's enough credit. You seem to forget that customers are people. And more than that, to you they are customers.

 

Chris I've told you over and over that the problem is lack of communication, but you've refused to acknowledge it. I get... we, the customers, get that you have vendors and that things can get delayed and things can get buggy. But if we don't know what is happening, especially after having already given you money, without a contract because we put our trust and faith in you, then we are bound to get upset. And if a bug needs fixing, we need to know you're on it, or why you are not on it.

 

The PsF issue, which I still have not seen you admit is PsF as a whole, not just 720 (or was it 1080) is extremely legitimate. And if someone says they want that fixed, or even that it is a deal breaker, that's simple, objective honesty, not a judgement. If they say "Chris sucks for not having that working yet" that's a judgement. I have not publicly seen the latter. Publicly I haven't seen much at all in the way of complaints, mostly just people with issues they were not aware of trying to get answers. I'm sure you've had plenty of private encounters, good on the customer for keeping it that way. Until the past few months I've seen a lot more public praise than complaints.

 

Chris, you know how upset I've been in the past, and you know I've kept it between us. That's because I don't think my emotions or your emotions are relevant to this discussion. I try to look at it objectively. I have a person or two I can vent to when necessary, but when I talk about your product on set to people who are interested, I tell them exactly what I told you I say: "It's a great design that is presently coming up short on execution. Don't buy one yet, but look for it in the future." Then I show them the good and the bad. I think the product could be great, but it's not there yet, and neither is your customer service. You're right that it can get better over time. If you discontinue your public emotional responses and start communicating openly and honestly and often with your customers, directly rather than on the forum, I think you'll see an immediate improvement to reaction. Sure, it sucks to have put so much into a product that is unfinished for reasons you're not happy with just to continually hear about the unfinished stuff. But so what? Use that as motivation to get things completed. And promise your customers it's gonna happen. Promising them you're going to stop improving it is the opposite of productive.

 

Even when venting I remind my friends that I wish for only the best for everyone and for you. And it's true, I really want you to succeed for all your efforts, and I want to be proud to own the product of those efforts. I appreciate what you came in to this wanting to accomplish, and I appreciate how far you've come. I don't need the monitor to be perfect today, but I need to be up to date on what is happening.

 

I think your DP analogy is a faulty comparison to begin with, but a worthy effort at trying to help bridge the divide. So to answer your questions honestly: I love when a DP tells me they didn't like a shot and that it could be better. I love it even more when they tell me HOW it could be better. Every time that happens I become a better operator. And sure I disagree with them plenty, but in learning what they like I become more versatile. And yes, sometimes I get pissed about it because they don't understand what I have to work with to get the shot. In fact, this happened yesterday on several shots. I left the emotion inside, told the DP I'd had some struggles with equipment and other complications, and apologized for not communicating these issues in the moment (even though it was often because he did not give me a chance to communicate before going again). He smiled, shook my hand, told me I did a great job and that the shots in the end came out great.

 

We're your customers, we simply want you to treat us like it. Please keep up the hard work. You're so close, why turn back now?

 

Edit to add: I don't think you need to stick religiously to a timeline, I know that's impossible. However, if you made a prioritized plan, based on what you know is likely to happen (unexpected panel delays, unexpected bugs, etc...) and then communicated that plan to the customers, or at least the immediate priority, and then updated us regularly along the way, I think you'd gain a lot of that faith and trust back, and earn it from prospective customers. No need to be super detailed, just: "We're working with the programmer to get the PsF issue solved as quickly as possible. Hoping to have it a firmware fix in a month or two" and then before that month is over: "May be closer to two, or even three, but we're getting there." Etc...

[Afton Grant]

You're right, Chris, a company must have passionate people working for it in order to survive. But a company is not based in its employees. It's based in its customers. Your headquarters can be overflowing with passion, but that passion is all for nothing without customers. What I feel you fail to comprehend over and over is the customer is the important person in this equation.

In this industry, you're standing next to the likes of Jim Bartell, Preston, XCS, PRO, Tiffen, and a handful of others I'm surely forgetting. These are companies with impeccable customer service reputations. Companies, who when a customer calls with an issue with one of their products, a replacement unit is in the mail almost before the phone conversation is over. These are the companies who, fortunately for us, we have grown used to. Are we spoiled? I don't think so. We demand of our equipment the same level of quality our employers demand from us. This leaves very little room for products that don't live up to those standards.

Which brings me to your case specifically. What I think you're failing to hear over and over is that nobody is trashing you personally. In fact, every email I've ever sent you, as well as most of the posts on this forum discussing issues with the monitor, include the caveat that your hard work, as well as Mike's and the rest of your team, has not gone unnoticed. Not a single person reading this right now is ignorant enough to think a brand new product will work flawlessly right from the start. What we all DID expect, however, is that considering the faith and money we have invested, you would stand behind your product and work to make us happy.

You may be thinking, "Well if everybody would leave me alone and let me work on the product itself, then they would be happy." Unfortunately it just doesn't work that way. We know you've got production delays. We know you were promised things that weren't delivered on time, or of a certain quality (believe me, we can empathize with that one). We know many things are largely out of your control. That's fine. Forcing us along for the ride with no way out, is not.

This is the source of much of the negative feedback you're receiving. People have paid a handsome amount of money for a product that was advertised to do a number of things. They are experiencing issues with your product, and it is not doing all it was advertised to do (regardless whether it is still being developed or not), and they don't feel there is a solution on the horizon. They feel stuck. And further, with posts of yours like those in this thread, they do not have the confidence that you have their best interests in mind. Implying the customer might be the problem has GOT to be at the top of the Business 101 textbook's "Don't" list.

The value to you and to us in making us feel like you've got our backs no matter what is so much greater than the value of fixing that pesky PsF issue.

[Thomas English]

All kind of makes me wonder why I even put any effort into this... Guess the indication is there that I shouldnt put any more in...

 

This is a little worrying. Are we to take it your considering discontinuing and withdrawing support for the monitor?

 

This was an expensive monitor. I do hope that software updates will enable it to read a PSF and some RED EPIC signals as the monitor was originally intended and sold for. It is a great monitor otherwise but currently to my purposes only in standard def using a redbyte downconverter.

 

There is no doubt we all took a leap of faith and trust giving you money long before the monitor was finished and ready. Clearly you guys have worked incredibly hard to try to make this work. It would be gutting if all that work and money till now was to waste.

 

Please continue: As you say; Rome was not built in a day.

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

I spent some time this morning and talked to AJA up in Grass Valley.

 

They have a product that should at least for now fix the PSF issue.

 

 

They were so kind and ran a couple of test for me to confirm that their "UDC" cross converter does the following:

 

 

1080 PSF 23.976 TO 1080 P 23.976

1080 PSF 24 TO 1080 P 24

1080 PSF 25 TO 1080 P 25 (The UDC reads 1080 PSF 25 as 1080i 25 on its SDI input, but does output 1080 P 25)

1080 PSF 29.97 TO 1080 P 29.97 (The UDC reads 1080 PSF 29.97 as 1080i 29.97 on its SDI input, but does output 1080 P 29.97)

 

This should be a working solution for everybody that has the issue and does not want to down-convert to SD NTSC/PAL.

 

 

http://www.aja.com/en/products/mini-converters/udc

 

Take care...

[Michael Hauer]

Having started this thread I just want to say something publicly to Chris and Mike. I didn't post my frustration to trash your company, I was really just reaching out to this community to try and find a solution to the problem because I have a busy week and I was excited to have a working digital level. I like everyone else have noticed your desire to get this right. I have no plans to sell off the monitor and I can say without hesitation that the image on that monitor has improved my work in a lot of situations. Please don't take frustration and criticism the wrong way. To continue your analogy with operators, when we set the bar high (like you clearly have with this product) you better believe the director, dp, and producer are not shy to tell us what they think. In the end though it is much better to have these conversations publicly and to be as open with your customers as possible. A lot of our job performance at least in my in my experience is based on how we handle this adversity.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Michael Hauer