Will someone help this fellow?
 

Mr. Lee from NZ writes:

I have a MX300. There is a short black line problem... It doesn't appear when shooting in normal interlaced mode. But it appears in frame mode. There is a short horizontal black line on top left corner of the screen in frame mode. The line doesn't shows on TV. But it can be seen on PC monitor. The picture transfered from video footage(in frame mode) to MMC card, also show the line. Could you please test it and tell me if yours have same results? I would much appreciated if you could test this for me. I tried to post this problem on DVinfo site, but I couldn't post...

Thank you

I too have an MX300 but I certainly don't get the fault you describe Mr Lee. BTW - I used to live in Christchurch many years ago. Have you taken the camera back to the shop to show them the fault? Sorry I can't be of more help.

tom.

Hey, I have the same problem too! But on the day that I went to the Panasonic repair centre a few blocks from my home, the problem disappeared!

It comes on now and then. I'll check over the next few days and post my findings.

Pana Tech writes:

I have passed to our technical people for study. Just a thought though, I remember a similar issue some time back and recall "I think" that the black line or lines was only apparent on the extreme edge of PC Editing programme viewer screen. I have a feeling the problem is not camera but rather Codec related when converting DV > AVI for editing or viewing on PC. Putting this aside, one can edit, render and export to camera without any lines successfully. It's like under scan or visible frame cut off by PC only, this is why picture cut off for vertical and horizontal cannot be seen on camera or TV normally as picture overs scan is used to hide such things. Anyway we can confirm this and advise.

More to come.

E-mail this tech fellow with attachment (an example of this problem and the details---serial number of the camera). He writes, "I'm not aware of any issue like this but an example would help on the way to investigating it."

MarkE@panasonic.com.au

Thanks Frank.

That guy could be right, the problem seems to be arround when I capture using Windows Movie Maker. I'll check out Adobe Premiere, iMovie and Final Cut Pro someday.

If I'm not mistaken, I too have the problem with my MX300 capturing into my Matrox RT2000.

I'll need to verify that once I get home & fire up my videoedit machine.


I would say this is normal (but not desirable and the fault of the camera maker), it is an annoying effect that you would get when transferring to PC. You won't see it on your TV 'cos of the overscan.

From what I remember reading, the topmost line of the TV has extra information i.e. teletext data. If you ever mistune your TV (incorrect vertical hold adjustment), and the picture shows an "in between" frames, you will see this data as a line with black & white dots that move & flash.

If I use a Sony DV cam, it's worst. I get to see the garbage at the top line, sometimes it flashes. Not only that, Sony's images are not centered - the picture is pushed to the right a few pixels, leaving a conspicious black vertical bar on the left edge of the screen.

This annoying phenomenon is most apparent & a pain when you do PIP (Picture in Picture) or shrink the video picture & even during "page turn" effects 'cos you get to see the borders of the picture.

What others have done is to somehow mask off a few pixels of the border of the picture. Matrox has an option to automatically do this when transferring the DV from the vidcam to the PC. In fact, Matrox PIP & page curl transitions do this masking automatically, just for that segment.

A hint: You only need to do this masking to the video segment containing the PIP etc. transitions 'cos that's where it's most noticable.

OK, checked with Windows Movie Maker and Adobe Premiere on PC, the line is visible, about 50 to 100 pixels long.

Pretty annoying when I make VCD movies and the line shows up when I play on PC.

Haven't have the time to fire up my Powerbook to check on iMovie and FCP, busy editing a documentary of my hiking trip to Mulu, Sarawak, Malaysia.

Doing the Malaysian tourism board a favour: for those interested, here is a good link to Mulu: http://www.forestry.sarawak.gov.my/f...np/np/mulu.htm