Which reminds me that I forgot to mention that the GL1 and the PD150 were manually white balanced to the same white target prior to the show.

I returned from vacation and I have mosaic -like noise on playback of a panasonic DV tape. I cleaned the playback head and I now realize that the problem is with the video tape after checking the playback on other tapes. Is there a professional method of "cleaning" this tape?

No. If the footage has been corrupted during recording due to contamination on the camera's heads (most likely) it's just gone. Sorry.

I took out my GL1 (Euro model XM1 actually) today after not using it for a few months (everything worked fine last time I used it). There is a problem with the viewfinder/LCD screen. The camera is not detecting that the screen has been shut, and therefore does not switch the LCD off and the viewfinder on. I can tell this is the case because I know that normally if you close the screen almost all the way you can see it switch off, which is not happening now. If I turn the screen right around to face the subject, the viewfinder comes on as normal, so it's definately the hardware that detects the screen being closed that is faulty.

So, is there anythign I can try before taking it to be repaired, or would I risk messing it up even more?

Thanks.

It's been a while since I've had a GL1, but I suspect that the basic lcd mechanics have not changed with the GL2. The switch that enables/disables the lcd is not user-accessible. You'll have to send the camera for service if it does not fix itself.

Lately I've been wondering about the "line in attenuator" listed in the menu of the GL1. The manual isn't much help, but does mention that it is for use when dubbing from a VCR. Is there any way to record audio using the line in when shooting regular footage? Would there be any advantage to this?

I have used this setting when feeding sound from the line-out of a public address system so I could pick up the audio directly without a separate microphone. This basically allows you to input a "high-level" audio signal into the microphone mini-jack without overpowering the circuitry.

Since the mini-jack is a stereo input, you will probably need a Y-connector to split such a mono signal to feed both left and right channels into a stereo mini-plug (I did). I assume, without having tried it, that a mono-plug would short one channel.

Hi, I see that on ebay I can get a GL1 in used but good condition for about $1,000. I have about $1250 saved up. Do you think I should go for a used GL1, PV-DV953, or save for something else?

Thanks

Riley,

That's not a bad price if it is in really good or mint condition. I have had my GL1 for 2.5 years now and although I was never really impressed with its construction I have always been pleased with the image quality. I know it's pretty tough shelling out a grand for something you can't put your hands on and try out but that's pretty much how it is if you want it cheap. I would be asking the seller a lot of questions like how many hours on it, if it has ever had tape dropouts or tracking problems, if it has every been factory serviced etc. The sellers response and attitude may give you some better insight as to what you are bidding on. Also check this forum since I have seen a few for sale.

Best of luck

Mark Williams

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6819

Yes, we all know about the eBay link...however if you are smart its EXTERMELY easy to spot these people and scam artists. I got a GL1 for $860, resold it for $1125 so I'd say $1000 is a good deal especially if it comes with the original accessories (the older the cams get...the less original accessories they tend to come with).

i think im going to get a pv-dv953 and save a tad bit more and get a glidecam 2000

Hi all,

Recently my GL1 Firewire port stopped communicating with my PC. I tried another device to the PC and it communicated well.

Contaced Canon they wanted $900 to replace the board.. Kind os steep considering the age of the camera.

What I want to know is if anyone else has had this problem and is there a less expensive way to repair it. Apart from getting a cheap DV cam to capture with or a deck maybe someone knows what can be done.

Thanks
in Advance

Dan

Had a similiar problem with a Sony camera and it ended up being a connector problem on the camera. Try a different firewire cable or slightly adjust the current cable by flexing ever so slightly while in the camera to see if that is it. I wouldnt send the camera in for repair at the current repair price. Sell it as a 'studio only' camera on ebay.

Hey everybody

I'm writing from the cold wasteland that is Iceland (only plusses being Bjork, Sigurros and PAL).

I don't have alot of expirience working with video (at least not in practice), but have had the plesure of working with 3 different kinds of 3 CCD cameras: The Sony PD100a, PD150 and the Canon XM1 on various short film projects.

I preferred the XM1 over the PD100 but found the PD150's resolution to be superior (although I preferred the XM's color reproduction over all of them).

I have now been offered to buy the XM1 for a relatively low price of 80.000 icelandic kronas (around $1000). The camera is in good condition. It opnly has about 50 hours on its head and looks realatively unscathed except for a dent in the casing of the built in micraphone (which otherwise works fine) and one dead green pixel on the LCD screen (doesn't display in the recordings). I loved the images that I got out of it but the only thing that really bugged me was the lack of XLR inputs. I was shooting an Interview-docu thing and it was farily annoying to be lumbering around with a phantom power mixer for the microphone work.
I will mostly be using the camera for short film and documentary work so the XLR inputs are pretty important.

The problem with living on an island (espeially this island) are the ridiculously high customs and generally high pricing of electronics. So the going rate for DV cameras is alot higher here than on mainland europe and in the US (A new PD150 going at over $5000, the DVX is similar) so the only sane choise is to bend the law and get them from mainland europe.
I've had my eye on the DVX100EA (is the advanced pal veriosn out yet?) but am now having second thougts about it.

Should I go throught the extra hassle and price to get the DVX100EA from europe (probably could get it for about $3800) or should is this XM1 deal any good for a 2 year old camera with few hours on it? can I get an XLR adapter for the XM1? are they pricey?

Or should I maybe get a XM2 from the ariport dutyfree for $2250?

I just bought a Gl1 in awesome condition and I wanted to know your opinion on what type of minidv tapes work best with this camera? Also looking to buy some filters and wanted to know what are the "must-have" filters, what brands to look for and what brands to stay away from. thanx

Oscar,

I have used Sony DVM60 Excellence tapes in my GL-1 for the past 3 years with no problems.

Regards,

Mark

Know of any place to get em cheap?

I use mostly Panasonic, but if they have none at Best Buy switching to Maxell has not jammed the cam. I always stay away from JVC. I have had 3 of their consumer cams which have broken down prematurely and their tape has messed up my cam.

Tip: once you choose a brand it is best not to switch; jamming can result.

get the xm1, it's a good camera for the price

Thanx

Hey,

I'm currently looking to get my hands on a used GL1. If anyone here, or anyone you know is selling one, please let me know. Otherwise, recommendations on where to look for a used GL1 would also help. So far, all I have in mind is Ebay. They usually go for around 800 - 900 there.

- Thanks

There's one for sale right now in our Classifieds (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26562) section.

Thanks for link, but I'm looking for somthing a little closer to $1,000 if not lower.

Make him an offer, Shawn. That's part of what the Classifieds is about.

I did it... I went ahead, and purchased a cheapo lens on ebay. Partly out of curiousity, partly out of necessity, mostly out of cheapness.

So, being the dutiful board citizen that I am, I decided to share my initial results. After finally recieving my new toy, I went out into my backyard to shoot some flora and fauna. After 15 minutes, a Mockingbird decided to grace me with it's presence. I noticed several things.

1) Shooting birds is for the birds. About the same time I get framed, zoomed, and almost focused, the little bugger has flown off. I have much more respect for those who shoot wildlife.

2) There is significant vignetting until halfway through the zoom.
It looks like I'm shooting through the middle of a donut. Mmmmm... Donuts...

3) There is only a slight improvement in the closeness. At 30 ft and full optical zoom, the subject is just out of focus, no matter how hard you try. At a little less than full zoom, the image is pretty clean.

4) There is an annoying little lens flare present in the lower left corner, shaped like a pentagon. It's almost like being haunted by the Chrysler logo.

Since I don't have any prior experience with a tele-converter, I can't compare it to anything. I can say, that even a slight improvement was worth the $39.95 I spent on it. Of course, as soon as I can, I'll replace it with a better lens.

Or buy a wide angle...

I've played with both the Sony and the Century Optics lenses. All are sharp at the high end with little lens flare so this may be a case of getting what you pay for. All of them vignette when zoomed out. My feeling is that the vignetting stops when you are at the mutiplied equivalent of the 20x of the original lens. So they should be considered add-ons.

Shooting birds takes lots of practice and songbirds are among the hardest.

1) Use a tripod.
2) Find the birds singing post. During the breeding season a territorial bird will often return to one branch to sing from. Set up in a blind or in the shadows and focus on that point.
3) Birds see VERY well. If there is interest I can post an essay on the topic of how well birds see and hear and why wearing camo is not such a bad idea.

It is much easier to use a big lens to film more stationary wildlife - ducks on a pond, herons, etc.

The latest (?) isse of Digital Videomaker has an interview with a filmaker working on a new documentary on grizzly bears. He primarily used an XL1 with a 600 mm lens. Given all of the conversion factors that is what, equivalent to a 4200mm lens?!? If you get farther away then it is easier to film without disturbing the wildlife.

Finally, practice, practice, practice. Film an hour and get snippets of useful footage. For the documentary mentioned above the cameraman was in the field for 250 DAYS! The life of the wildlife photographer......

I know the GL1 has no manual gain control for audio, but I was reading something that made it sound like the auto gain on the GL1 works more like a limiter than a variable auto gain--only attenuating sounds so loud they will clip, rather than adding gain to weak signals with the universally despised S/N disasters that typically ensue.

Can anyone either confirm or deny these reports?

The GL1 operates at full gain until the input signal exceeds a threshold, about 12 dB below clipping, then it starts to reduce the gain. It does not have the high degree of background noise pumping you get with many other camcorders, but you will hear changes in the noise floor if you are overdriving the input (or the build-in mic).

Also worth noting that the noise floor is substantially lower at the MIC ATT setting.

I found that using mic att almost cancels my shotgun.

Connecting an external mic disconnects the internal mic. It is a feature of the microphone stereo mini jack.

Hi,

I've heard a lot about how the gl2 has manual audio meters and I was wondering if there were accessories that I could buy for my gl1 to get similar control over the audio. I am interested in videoing quite a few interviews this summer using a wireless mic.

Thanks

A device like the Beachtek DXA-4P (http://www.beachtek.com/) will provide you will channel-level control as well as XLR audio connections (which you'll probably need for most wireless receivers).

A couple companies (SignVideo for one) offer VU ,meters that will provide some indication. They connect to an audio output jack. With a bit of skill you can use them to tell when the GL1 goes into limiting/gain eduction mode.

The main three distributors of XLR adapters with level controls are Beachtek, Studio 1, and SignVideo.

They often run ads. in Videomaker, etc.

I've been trying to get my Studio 9 AV/DV setup to recognize my GL1. I thought it was the computer setup so I've been working with Pinnacle support. Yesterday I gave my camera to a friend who has a setup for his two Sony cameras and a DVD record deck with IEEE 1394. They couldn't find my camera. This morning, I called Canon and was told that any tapes recorded in LP cause the camera to not be recognized. On page 22 of the manual is a box that says the tapes can't be dubbed if recorded in LP. That's the only clue to the whole mess. Anybody know of a way to get all my kids' high school memories onto DVD from these LP tapes? Direct record to VCR doesn't work very well.

Off-hand, buy, borrow or rent a 2nd miniDV camera and transfer the LP footage to that camera's tape (recording in SP mode) via Firewire. The camera does not have to be a top-line unit but simply capable of recording from an external device.

Prospectively, as you've painfully learned, never use LP mode on any camera no matter how compelling you believe the reason. It's a well-worn topic here and you have a bit of company in your distress.

Is there a way to output via Firewire to another camera or does it require some other mode? The manual isn't particularly helpful. The reason I recorded in LP in the first place was that all the events were more than an hour by ten or fifteen minutes. I thought I'd done a good thing. Guess not.

See "Dubbing to/from a Tape..." around p.99 of your manual. (The DV data stream is always sent to the Firewire port during playback.)

Well, setting the camera to SP and 12-bit audio and recording a fresh tape gave me the same results. Neither computer recognizes the camera no matter how I attach it. I tried both 1394 drivers and used RegClean. DV IN flashes in a repeatable code but it doesn't show up in device manager. Canon helpline says the port is bad and send it in for repair. Sound right?

your issue has nothing to do with tapes. in fact, connecting the GL1 to your computer and then to studio 9 while in 'CAMERA' will work and you could 'capture' live video being sent out the firewire port. I'd strongly suspect the port, since you've tried the alternate computer test and nothing was detected there. Of course, this assumes you tried a different firewire cable also.

Hi, did a short search for this but could not find any answers.

I have an older GL1 that has been great for me throughout the years. However, it has started giving me some artifact problems that can be best seen here in this short clip:

http://www.tedandnicki.com/gl1/camera_gl1.mov

This particular problem occurred on a tape that had been used once before, however, I took a brand new tape and tried recording on that, only to encounter the same problem. What is strange is that after a while of recording on the used tape (maybe after 15 minutes), everything looked fine and the video I recorded was useable.

I tried cleaning the GL1 with a head cleaning tape and that did not do anything to remedy the problem.

Is this a problem with the heads? Anyone else familiar with this?

Thanks,
Ted

Ted,

This issue has been discussed before. For me it took a head alignment at Cannon to fix the problem. The GL-1 heads are somewhat notorious for getting out of alignment. Once fixed keep in mind that some of you old tapes may not replay properly if the heads were slightly out of alignment but playable when originally recorded. I lost playback capability on 25 tapes because of this.

Regards,

Mark

I'm going to have to agree with mark on this....the fact that the artifacts are aligned with the left edge is intriguing...I've not seen this before...and it would make some sense if we we're talking analog video...but perhaps alignment will cause this in digital as well.

Try another cleaning or two...and only use new tapes...if it doesn't straighten out...I think its time for a service call...not bad for a camera of this age.

Barry

my gl-1 does the exact same thing, on the left edge of the video.
and it's totally intermittent.

hi everyone.

i did a search on this, but didn't find anything so here goes...

my GL1 is doing something really strange. it will randomly decide not to record any sound on the tape at all while i am shooting video. sometimes a single tape i've shot will have a clip with no sound, right in the middle of other clips that are fine. it seems to be completely random and intermittent.

the camera has been doing this for a while, but this weekend i had my first opportunity to capture some video onto a computer, and i learned something more about this.

the clips that don't have sound can't be captured at all. the computer had no idea what to do with them. any clip with sound could be captured easily, but the clips without sound could not.
i'm guessing there's some sort of timecode missing as well as the sound...?

the camera also produces the same type of visual artifacts as someone posted about recently, on the left of the video image. it does this completely intermittently as well.
in that thread everyone was talking about bad head alignment...
could that be the culprit for my missing sound and timecode as well?

any ideas?

-martino

"in that thread everyone was talking about bad head alignment...
could that be the culprit for my missing sound and timecode as well?"

This is purely speculative, but yes it very well could be. The tolerances for laying bits onto tape are bogglingly tight.

ken, i think you are probably right.
i was thinking about it last night, and i bet it's the head alignment being off, and the intermittency is probably tied to whether or not the tape gets threaded up just the right way when i load it.

i shot some video last night on a tape that had previously had no sound, but last night the sound was there and everything was fine. the only variable was that i had taken the tape out and put it back in...

so - how do i go about contacting a canon service center to get the heads aligned? and what's it going to cost me roughly?

-martino

Use Canon's GL1 Service Locator page (http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ServiceLocatorAct&fcategoryid=227&modelid=7376) to find out where to get the camera repaired.

cool. thanks, ken

I've been working with my GL1 for about 3 years now.

Recently I've tried to capture footage off of some tapes (freshly shot video). When I view the footage using the DV controls in either Adobe Premiere 6 or Sony Vegas 4, it's fine. However, when I hit capture (either batch or manual) the video will capture for approximately 2 seconds and then block / pixelate in both black and white and then a spectrum of colors (think TV static noise, except more blocky; this will weave in and out of the video occaisionally).

I was thinking about getting a video-head cleaner, but viewing tapes through the LCD and analog composite out to TV works fine. PLAYING through the IEEE 1394 port works fine as I've already mentioned. CAPTURE is what gives me issues.

I've already tried this on two different computers and with two different IEEE 1394 cables.

Anyone had experience with something like this?