Bars on my new XL2 (not the good kind)
 

Picked up a new XL2 today. Shot a little video in 30p, and I see bars. Not sure if it's the camera or just problems when capturing. I have no probs with my GL2.
What I see is a horizontal bar that shoots from the bottom to the top every few seconds. It's real quick, like a flash. Also on the far right side, there's some kind of thin bars. they add up to about the width of your pinky. Anyone know what this might be? Ill play with some setting and try again. If nobody knows and it continues, Ill post a clip of it.

Hi Adam,

A picture is worth a thousand words...a clip would definitely help us understand what you're describing, so if you can post even a frame grab, or better a short clip, that would be great.

Without seeing it, though, could it be vertical smear from a bright light source? Any CCD imaging device, even studio cameras, can do this if provoked.

Strange thing happened. I captured the image on my PC with APP. Then played it. I saw the bars, they were there. Same bars at the same time each time I played it. If I made a new clip, I still saw bars. Just at differet times. I put the video clip on a disk and put it on my Mac so I could upload it. When I played it on my Mac with Windows Media....NO BARS.
Anyways, here's the clip in question. I slow zoom to the hula chick, when I pause, you'll see one of the "horizontal flashes". Pan a little left to the doorbell box and pause, when I pan right again, there's a series of 7 or 8 flashes. they were REAL obvious. Maybe it's just my player on Windows? I dunno.
Let me know if you see them not. Im not seeing the bars on the right side of the screen anymore either.

http://www.z5films.com/videos/TEST2.WMV

P.S. I burned the clip to DVD. No bars there either. I swear there were there. I guess I need to invest in a tin foil hat?

Hi Adam. I couldn't see anything wrong using MediaPlayer or stepping through frame by frame in Vegas. Either the effect is too subtle for my laptop/eyes combination or you need to get the tin foil hat!

It might be worth playing the clip on your PC using the old Media Player, to see if it shows the same problem. You can access it by going to Start/Run and typing mplayer2.exe.

Richard

I also looked through the clip carefully twice with WMP at half speed on a PC as well as in a PPro 1.5.1 project and didn't see anything amiss. Since neither exporting to DVD nor WMV shows the artifact, I'd assume that rules out the camera or capture process as culprits...the artifacting just isn't there. I'd guess that it is either a video overlay problem in the PPro monitor window or a bug in the video card driver (check for an update)?

If you'd like to post a couple seconds of unedited DV AVI from the spot where you see the artifact, I'd be happy to check it in PPro to confirm it isn't in the original clip. Also, either a frame grab or screen shot showing the artifact might allow us to see it as you do.

I am viewing on a MAC g5 2.5 dual and I definitely saw the bars. They are horizontal bars that are the most obvious when you pan across the pictures. I have watched the clip several times now and am positive they are there. It almost looks like the same kind of digitization you get when you use an old, dirty tape or a tape with a wrinkle in it. You're not crazy.

It appears to be another "undocumented feature" only available to Mac users. Man, they get everything and we Windows users don't get squat.

Adam,

You say this is a brand new xl2. Did you clean the heads first? The manual says if you record first, and find some problems, to go ahead and clean the heads right up front.
PG32 - BEFORE YOU BEGIN RECORDING - Make a test recording first to check if the camcorder operates correctly. If necessary, clean the video heads.

I couldn't download your clip. For some reason I kept getting a 'player error'. My WMV player runs fine... downloaded some other clips, played some of my own. Not sure why I had trouble with yours.

What happens when you play the tape directly from the camera into a tv or monitor? Are they there?

Yes, I see it as well, clear as day. And, funny enough, I also watched it from a Mac. In non-technical laymen's terms...that ain't normal.
The previous post stated a head cleaning... might want to at least try that. But the artifact doesn't look like the type of artifacting (is that a word?) that would occur with dirty heads. At least not that I've seen.
I could be totally wrong... which is very likely.
Incidentally, I met and married my wife in Hawaii (met on Oahu, married up in Kailua) and remember seeing those pictures. Neither one of us can remember who the photographer is. Any idea?