A friend let me borrow his XL-1 and I eagerly took it out this weekend. I am familiar with DV as I am a lowly GL1 user.

The video from the XL-1 looked wonderful as I played it on the television, but when it came time to edit the video on my computer, I was dismayed to find that the image was "clipped" in that five full columns of pixels were dark on both the left and right sides of the image. Here is a GIF still (saved as 640x480 sq pixels) of a frame for illustration:

http://www.microserve.net/~jeffrac/foal.gif

Has anyone ever seen this problem? Are the CCDs bad in the camera? Right now I am feeling terrible and am hoping that I did not damage the camera. Luckily it is still under warranty - would it be worth shipping to the Canon NJ facility for a test? I'm going to notify the owner and offer to pay for the shipping.

Thanks a lot in advance for any help!

That's perfectly normal and well outside the TV-safe area of the image. Not to worry. There is nothing wrong with the camera. Hope this helps,

Yes, that is very normal. That happens all the time when I digitize using Final Cut Pro. When you finish editing and record it back out to tape, it won't show at all.

Hope that helps,
Tom

Chris, When you blow it into 35mm film format, do these black
bars on left and right still appear???

No. The film transfer house will crop it down to the TV-safe area.