These two devices work great together, but there is one little trick that’s good to know. The RED has a slightly unique way of carrying the video signal over HD-SDI. You must manually adjust the signal frequency of the video. It’s not a big deal and in fact most monitors will self-compensate for it. But the carrier signal of the Cam-Wave cannot (it doesn’t know it’s supposed to because it is just a carrier, not a display or recorder).

Why does this matter and what do you do about it? It’s really simple: If you’re shooting at 24fps or 30fps, then the video frequency must be set to 59.97i. If you are shooting at 25fps then the frequency must be set to 50i. I get this question all the time on rental jobs where people have a strange rolling image from the Cam-Wave. Every time it turns out they are shooting 25fps but never switched the camera to 50i.  Here’s the menu path to adjust this on the RED:

SYSTEM — MONITOR — HD-SDI — 50i/59.97i.

Takes just a few seconds once you know where to look.