Trouble with new XL1S

Hello!

I just bought a brand new XL1S last friday, and I'm very happy with this camera, except one thing:

at the bottom of the picture of the 2 tapes I already recorded, there is a defect only visible on the computer screen.
It is only few lines at the left bottom of the picture, but I don't think it is normal to have this kind of trouble on a new camera. (Or maybe I'm wrong and it's normal?)
There is a picture here:
http://www.cinedvd.net/defect.jpg

Any ideas of what's wrong with this?


Thanks for your help.
(PS: I hope my english was understandable :-) )

[Rob Lohman]

Hitcher,

Although I do not seem to have your blue line, I also have
stuff happening at the bottom of the picture. This doesn't
matter though since:

a) it is the overscan (or is it underscan?) area. Your TV will
not display it
b) usually you crop this for widescreen presentation anyway.

If you are going to use it for web broadcast or another type
of view where you see them just add a tiny small bar at the
top & the bottom of the image if you do not use widescreen.

I'll check some of my files tonight to see exactly how it looks
at my system.

Yes, it's only visible on computer screen because of overscan, and I also will crop the pic, but I just want to know if it is normal (strange if it is!) or if is my new camera got defective video head.

[Ken Tanaka]

Hitcher,
I'm not getting that tiny noise bar at the bottom of my XL1s (NTSC) frames but I have gotten them on my XL1, although not consistently. As Rob indicated I don't think it will be much of a factor since it will fall outside the scan of any consumer tv. Still, I really think that it should not happen at all. It might be worth giving your dealer a call.

[Bill Ravens]

I've had a similar thing on my XL1s, since new. It's only visible in my NLE tho'. It's gone during playback. It's most prominent in still image captures where it's easily cropped.

[Rob Lohman]

I looked at some of my footage again and I did detect some small
blue pixels at the bottom. There was also a very small pulsating
white line. They are barely noticable though. I rechecked the
same footage on my laptop (my LCD screen is much sharper) and
it looks like one or two pixel high line is changing the pixels
brightness a bit. It does not seem to alter the color too much.

[Bill Ravens]

The problem with overscan lines within the frame is that it greatly increases the amount of work the compression algorithm has to do. It is recommended to crop these areas out before compressing to MPEG, for example.

Thanks for your reply everyone.

So it looks this defect is a normal one on the XL1 :-(

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

Wow! This is a serious issue for anyone who hopes to use the output of the XL1S for compositing/picture-in-picture.

I've checked and the issue exists on my camera as well. I never saw anything like this on my old XL1. The translucent blue band appears as a border along the bottom of the screen and, to a lesser extent, along the left side of the screen as well. Fairly irritating! This seems like a tuning issue that would be fixable with a firmware update, or imaging realignment, or something.

So, I called the Canon customer service number at 1-800-828-4040 and talked to Chris. He said there's been no firmware update on the XL1S (can anyone confirm this?) and that nobody at Canon is aware of the issue. I provided him the link to this thread and he said he'd bring it up.