dancing pixels

[George Goltz]

new xl2 , shot 2 school plays one in 4x3 one in 16x9 both in 60i, seems like where ever there are staight lines(example written text on a poster) or staight edges around objects, the pixels dance around or seem to glitter along the edges, very annoying problem, edited in final cut and then to dvd, when viewing dvd problem seems even worse, had an xl1s never experienced this. seems much worse when playing to lcd or plasma screens, less when viewed on production monitor, anyone have any ideas? defective camera?

camera was in full manual mode with 0 gain, normal gamma, knee low,sharpness-1, everything else was defaut settings, shot on a tripod with image stabilization off, manual focus.

[Geoff Voorhees]

The first thing people are going to want to know is if you had the camera in automatic or manual, and also whatever other settings you may have used.

It may also help if you post some screen grabs of the issue in question.

[Andrew Khalil]

sounds to me like your DVD compression is the issue, not the camera. If you noticed it before you authored the DVD, it could be grain or something else that's image related.

Of course, this is speculation, so as previously mentioned, a screen grab would be great.

[George Goltz]

a screen grab meaning a few seconds of video or a still of the video?

The problem is apparent when playing the tape right out of the camera to a lcd screen tv

[Andrew Khalil]

I really don't think what you are seeing is a problem. From what you describe, it just sounds like moire being caused by the edges in the video. Because the resolution in SD video is quite low, you'll see this effect and it will be more obvious on HD display devices such as your LCD and less obvious on SD displays such as the CRT display which is designed to show SD signals.

[Jim Herman]

Just got my XL2 today and am noticing the same problem. I recorded in every mode auto and manual and wherever there are edges and semi-thin lines the video jumps like crazy. I understand about interlace flicker but this is way beyond normal interlace flicker. I didn't look at the manual yet so there is a possibility I'm doing something wrong. I recorded in a well lit gym and the bleachers and lines painted on the floor looked like they were vibrating. I've captured footage from about every pro mini dv camera out there and never noticed anything to this extreme but I'm going to check to see if I did something wrong but if you find a solution George, please let me know.

EDIT: The video I was rendering was interlaced. Normally I can view interlaced video on a progressive scan monitor without a problem but I guess it's just because the resolution is so high as Greg said below. The important thing is that the interlaced renders look great on a interlaced monior and if I render progressive, the progressive render looks great on a progressive scan monitor.

[Greg Boston]

My suggestion is to go back to the very beginning threads in this forum. People found out that with the higher resolution of the CCD's in the XL2, moire became a problem.

You can get rid of most of this by changing zoom, and more importantly, going into the menu and setting vertical detail to the low setting.

But yeah, this issue came up several times from several owners when the camera was first released. The XL2 is a good camera out of the box, but becomes a great camera when you learn how to go in and tweak the customization settings.

-gb-