Artifacts for no reason?!

[Mark Callahan]

I did some filming for a production house last week on my GL-2 and sent my tapes off to them to be reviewed/captured. They wrote back several days later and claimed my camera's heads were dirty as the video had artifacts in it.

During the course of the several days from when the tapes left my hands to when the production house wrote me, I did several other tapings (using new tapes) and observed NO artifacts. Only when my tapes went to their house did I get an artifact report. This makes me think it is a problem on their end not mine, but I haven't received the tapes back to review on my camera.

To make things wierder, I did more taping for them this week and sent my tapes (tapes 1 & 2) off FedEx overnight to them. The next day I resumed filming on tapes 3 & 4. I received a call from them today saying that tape 4 had artifacts in it, but not tape #3. Some of you might be thinking that my camera accumulated dust during the taping of tape #3, that resulted in a bad tape #4, but it there was no dust in the air as it had rained the day before and was misting (not enough to accumulate) while I was filming tape #3 & tape #4.

On top of all of this, my camera never alerted me that the heads were dirty.

So I'm starting to think the production house is lying to me, but I can't be sure till I see the tapes. Could it be that their deck head is dirty or that the X-ray @ FedEx messed up part of the tapes?

[Boyd Ostroff]

I think something like this would happen if your camera's heads are slightly out of alignment (or if their deck is out of alignment). If you can play the tapes ok on your camera then you could use a firewire cable to dub them directly to another camera or deck, then send those to the production company and see if they have any better luck.

[Mark Callahan]

Boyd-
Would you still think it is a head alignment issue even though I watched the tapes on another camera (still a cannon, but an Optura vs. GL-2)? And why would tape #3 filmed on Wednesday be fine, but tape #4 on Thursday be bad when all the camera did between the days was sleep in its box?

Wierd, but frustrating!

[Graham Bernard]

Mark, how old is the camera and roughly how much use - hours - has it done?

Newer cameras can suffer from head alignment issues. We have plenty of instances here on the Forum. I had something similar and needed to send my nearly 1 year old XM2 to the Canon Garage. In any event I would be tempted to send the camera to a Canon workshop immeadiately for a check-over. Least ways if the the report is "nothing done" . . . or whatever they say as a clearance, then you WILL know that your camera isn't at fault and you can forward the same information to the third party - yes? OR if your camera WAS at fault then you will know! Either way you need to take urgent, present and appropriate action for your own piece of mind . . I would!

Look, both systems could be just at the edge of each others tolerances - and unfortunately it has been your work that has brought it to your and thier attention. Also doing "sideways" checks against other cameras will tell you that between your and the "other" camera you are ok. This doesn't say that the "other" camera is also out of alignment too! And all you've proved is that you are lucky on getting a comparison that is also incorrect - see? AND you wouldn't know. This type of non-controlled experiment could and can go around and around in circles.

Now that I've got some way down my particuoar video route I have a back-up camera just for the occasions I need to "over-lap" repairs AND to have a camera spare for breakdowns in general. I really couldn't handle the despair of thinking I would have to walk of the shoot because the camera went down!

Get it done and go and shoot some footage!

Best regards,

Grazie

[Mark Williams]

Both canon cams I have owned had tape head alignment problems. They went to the shop 3 times. The bad part is I shot about 20 tapes before I was aware of this. When the cam was returned properly aligned I was never able to play the previously recorded tapes again. Bummer.....

Regards,

Mark

[Mark Callahan]

Graham-
My GL-2 is 5 months old and I've shot maybe 50 hrs of footage on it.
I crossed checked my tapes on a 2 different Optura models and found no artifacts. Maybe all Cannons are off a certain amount, therefore I didn't see any artifacts? I was not able to check my footage on a non-Cannon camera.

I have a shoot coming up this week so after that's done i'll send the camera off and get it worked over. Unfortunately the local Cannon shop here says it will take 3-4 weeks! Would I be better off sending it somewhere else?

[Graham Bernard]

London UK here - but 3-4 weeks is about the turn around here too! Grazie