>>Looks like the problems aren't specific to model. <<

And I'd venture to guess they vary from camera to camera as well. My XL-1s has no horizontal bar at all, only vertical and on both sides which is unusual.

For everyone's information, I just called Canon support and was told that I shold contact Adobe and find out a way in which the "problem" can be fixed in the authoring software!! (no kidding!).

Very nice lady tried to help me, then went and asked "someone else" and that was the reply I got. I explained that this was causing some consternation with other users, and suggested that she should let her management know that it is a serious situation which could cost them sales - she said she would.

I think what this needs is a concerted effort by all concerned to call Canon and complain about the problem. Once they see that there are a lot of unsatisfied people out there, they might think about doing something about it.

My temporary work-around when outputting to an mpeg is to oversize the rendering by 16 pixels top and sides and then crop it (during the rendering process) by 8 pixels on all four sides - effectively getting rid of the overscan.

where's Chris (Hurd)? Chris...HELP!!!!

I've been yapping with Alex in email for abit now but, thought I should just make sure a put in a "My XL1S has the damn lines too" post in case anyone from Canon ever looks at this thread. I've talked to the owners hotline a couple times now and have been told that the problem report has been sent to the research department to figure out and that should be hearing from them eventually. We'll see. Being able to say that I get the same problems in XpressDV, FCP3, Premiere, and Video Vegas shuts 'em up about software 'issues' fast enough. If you call them, and urge everyone to, make sure you say you have tried it on various platforms and still get the lines. It will help skip that whole software rap the tech support people like to go into.

I wonder how Soderbergh handled this problem (in Full Frontal). Perhaps Canon made sure they sent him absolutely pristine cameras.

One way we work around the problem is to blow up the frame just enough to meet specs. This is, of course, not a good solution by a long shot since it degrades the picture. Another work around that does not require blowing up is to wipe in just enough of the same frame. This can be noticeable depending on the frame.

I don't recommend either of these feeble solutions but it did get us approved by the stringent PBS tech department for a number of years. It seems tech people don't care how the picture looks as long as it "meets specs".

I was talking with a tech type who knows a lot meore than me about these matters. He thinks Canon can fix the problem by altering the programming of the chip in the camera. It seems there are computer types who have been "experimenting" with the on-board firmware of digital cameras. But this is way beyond my field of knowledge.

Don't know if this is any help, but I once had a problem with Sony that seemed to be going nowhere when talking with the lower-level staff.

So, after determining who the president of the company was, I sent a certified letter to him laying out the problem. Within days, one of the president's top customer service guys called and got the whole mess cleaned up pronto. The president also followed up with a letter.

Now THAT'S service, hoss.

You might as well "get on record" with this problem; who knows, if all you send certified letters to the upper echelon, it might work wonders. Someone needs to post a name and address so that everyone sends the certified letter to the same person.

Good luck (I don't yet own a Canon; otherwise, I'd take the lead)

This morning I talked to Jerry at the Jamesberg, NJ service center. I described the problem of the black line at the bottom of the frame, and told him that there were one hell of a lot of angry XL-1s users out there. He was well aware of the problem, and explained it to me this way.
He said that every camcorder manufacturer has to deal with these scanning defects and each chooses to do it differently. Some put thinner black bands at the top and bottom, some on the sides. Canon chose the bottom for the XL-1s. I asked him why have them at all, and mentioned that there was no black line at the bottom with my XL-1 (as had been confirmed in several posts here). Yes, he said, but you have them up both sides on the XL-1. Indeed, when I got home I pulled up an XL-1 frame and there was a 6 pixel-wide line up the left border, and a thinner one up the right.
I suppose if I can have lived with the lines up the sides for years with the XL-1, I can live with one at the bottom with the XL-1s.
By the way, calling the service center direct in Jamesburg at the non toll-free number (I believe it's 732-7000 with the appropriate area code) gets past a lot of the bullshit.

Yes but..............

Jerry didn't answer the question....WHY have them at all???

Why not just build a camera that has NO black lines - top bottom or sides??

That's what I'd like to know.

Ron

Personally I'm not botherd by black lines so much... What bothers
me is the little white (or a line that has a different brightness?)
which is also pulsating over time. That is bothering me much
more, cause this actually is very very noticable on computer
footage. A little black bar might even proof usefull in PIP effects
(to have a small black line surroung the B footage from the A
footage). And since you resample a PIP frame you might as
well crop it first (which is very easy with todays softwares).

Ofcourse if you want to play it straight on a computer you still
see it, but is that such a problem, really? As I said, I have much
more problems with my white/brightness line that pulsates.

I'm thinking of buying a xl1s and this black/white line really bothers me, because I will create movies to be projected digitally and the lines will be visible then unless i film 4:3 and crop to 16:9.
I think there's a lot of people who would like to see this problem solved. Lets hope Canon fixes this soon.

"He said that every camcorder manufacturer has to deal with these scanning defects and each chooses to do it differently. Some put thinner black bands at the top and bottom, some on the sides. Canon chose the bottom for the XL-1s. I asked him why have them at all, and mentioned that there was no black line at the bottom with my XL-1 (as had been confirmed in several posts here). Yes, he said, but you have them up both sides on the XL-1. Indeed, when I got home I pulled up an XL-1 frame and there was a 6 pixel-wide line up the left border, and a thinner one up the right."

Wow, this is quite a breakthrough. I went back and checked out some of my old XL1 footage. Indeed. There's a left margin of 7 black pixels and a right margin of 6 black pixels. I had done hundreds of picture-in-picture effects with this footage and the fault was too innocuous to be noticed. (There are also 3 rows of blue-tinted pixels at the bottom of the frame on the XL1.)

Still, I don't buy either of Canon's explanations for this problem.

First. Why must there be ANY issue with boundaries? I have a Canon ZR10 (a cheapie camera in comparison to the XL1) and I checked out some of the footage shot on that--it doesn't have any border pixel issues). So, again, why isn't this something that can be fixed altogether?

Second. If there must be border pixel issues, why can't Canon at least make them symmetric with respect to the frame? That's probably why I never noticed them on my old XL1. On my XL1S I have some black border line issues on the bottom of the frame, and on the left side of the frame.

Third. On the XL1S it's not just a matter of black lines. There are also some rows of pixels that appear brighter or bluish. This is probably the "pulsating" rows of pixels Rob Lohman refers to. I've run some tests, and I don't think their brightness characteristics actually change with time, but on a pan or a tilt movement they may appear to pulsate with respect to the rest of the frame. In any case, the artifacting going on here isn't just a matter of a few rows of black pixels. There are brighter ones and blue-er ones too.

I'm putting together a web site with some examinations of this problem on my cameras and some raw and close-up images that detail the problem. Will post back soon.

Here's another curious situation that I wonder if anyone else has experienced. I routinely leave a UV filter mounted on the front of the standard 16x IIs lens. I once mounted a polarizing filter to the UV lens so that both filters were stacked onto the lens. In the widest angle setting, I could see some vingetting of the image. This is normal. What was weird was that the vignette wasn't symmetrical around the image frame. It vignetted the top right corner, but, no other corners!! This tells me the CCD is not concentric with the optic!!! What's up with that? Is that because of the stabilization system, perhaps?

If, in fact, the lens is decentered, say from poor asssembly QA, the image will suffer from coma and astigmatism. Basically, this will degrade the image resolution, read: sharpness

Robert,

Will your pages be available for posting on the Watchdog?

The reason why a 1-chip camcorder doesn't show this problem is because there are no other chips to align. The issue seems to be directly related to the alignment of multiple layers of images generated by the three CCD's. Therefore a single-CCD camcorder won't have it. And if they *could* make it symmetrical, then they probably could have eliminated it in the first place. As for myself, I wonder if it's not related to pixel-shift.

The explanation that came out of the Jamesburg facility is something you can put in the bank; Jerry is one of the top guys there among the service techs, if not *the* top guy.

I've been commenting on the causes of the black bars along the vertical sides or along the bottom of the full frame coming out of the XL-1 and XL-1s. So far my comments have been mainly academic, now the "problem" has turned into a huge financial loss for my company.

Perhaps Canon, along with other high end manufacturers of consumer MiniDV, DVPRO, and DVCAM, will claim these $4k systems were never designed to comply with the same strict professional standards as their $50k cameras. In many respects this argument is valid – smaller chips, more fragile construction, poor quality EVFs, inferior (by comparison) optics and servos. In the case of non-standard raster, the argument holds no water. This is simply a matter of poor quality control, or at best, an aspect not thought important enough to bother. If this is the case then we who use the XL-1 line and other “prosumer” camcorders, are justified in stopping the use of these cameras over an issue the manufacturer can easily correct without raising the price point of these systems. Non-standard blanking is simply not acceptable for professional use; it shouldn’t even be acceptable to any serious amateur (the target market of these systems) since it renders flawed any picture in picture effect.

The production we have been working on was shot with two XL-1 (a plain 1 and an S) and a SONY TRV900. The blanking for each camera is non standard in different ways. Our client has picked up on the “black bar” they see appearing, sometimes along the bottom of the frame (XL-1) and sometimes along either vertical side of the frame (XL-1s and TRV900). Since the two hour production is being released principally as QuickTime movies, there is no way to simply hide the wide blanking problems. We have to re-render ALL of our material with a slightly blown up frame (103%). This re-rendering is adding days of rendering to our postproduction. Days = money. We are now in the hole on an already ridiculously tight budget; all this, because no one has complained loudly nor frequently enough to the manufacturers. Their explanations, as cited earlier in this forum, are purely bogus. The quote from Canon is pure sales double-speak. I would have expected better.

I feel at a loss as to what action to take. Calling Canon to complain is mostly an exercise in frustration and futility. Writing letters to top management might be a better way to go but is not bound to yield any results unless there’s an onslaught of letters. Still, ultimately, I fear Canon will have the final word – a four thousand dollar camera is not meant for professional use. Pure BS and a cop out, but one that is hard to retort except with the only weapon we have – stop buying their cameras. I’m not proposing such harsh action because the XL-1 line has a lot to offer but this pesky little “flaw” is becoming a huge problem; for me, it has become a liability.

Calls and letters to "management" will accomplish nothing. Publicity about this problem, however, will have probably a significant impact.

As for myself, I'm forwarding the entire thread to CUSA's Director of Product Development, as soon as I get home.

Chris,

THANK YOU!!! I agree with Ken about bad publicity being the most effective and efficient way to go. Sending this thread to Canon is an excellent idea - not just because of what's in the thread but who's sending it and from where.

I, for one, would like to get a no nonsense and explicit technical explanation from the Canon engineers as to the source of the problem; from the development people as to why the problem was allowed to exist; and from the marketing department - what they plan to do about it. I know this is circular thinking but it gets everyone involved.

That's excellent news Chris - thanks for the positive action.

I think Canon has to approach this issue from this standpoint - In this changing world, media is being distributed in a new way through interactive multimedia, and of course via the web. It's not just a TV world any more!

Therefore, they cannot just hide things under the overscan, and pretend they don't matter any longer. Now, more of the world is seeing the WHOLE picture and not just a portion of it because of the new formats.

This is an evolving market, and one that will grow rapidly. Obviously a camera manufacturer who recognizes this, and provides a camera at this price level that can produce a "clean" image on all four sides will have a significant advantage.

Ron

Out of curiosity, has anyone seen this blanking problem (the expression makes the message look censored, doesn't it?) on the XL1s' closest competitor, the Sony PD150? How about the VX2000?

I just checked my GL1 (which I've had for 3 years) and noticed that it has two vertical bars, one on either side.

Great News, Chris!! Thanx for your help. Awareness of the "size" of the problem is something Canon needs to respond to positively.

This has echos of Sony's hiss feature/problem. Hopefully Canon will resolve this with less grief than Sony generated. Besides this will do nothing but please the Sony philes.

Nathan Gifford

Good observation, Nathan. That was a bit of a food fight, wasn't it?

In general, though, this is probably a notch lower of a problem than Sony's hissing audio. Black edges outside of the normal underscan will most significantly impact those who plan to package their video for streaming applications where the full frame is displayed (like Ozzie's project). Sony's noisy audio circuits hit -everyone- using the affeced cameras.

Also, Sony shouldn't be too smug until they can show that their comparable cams don't exhibit the same problem.

DV resolution is 720x480 which would be 345,600 pixels but, Canon has the XL1S spec listed at 270,000 pixels (250,000 effective pixels). Now, as its interlaced do they mean that we have 270,000 pixels per half frame or per full frame ? This stuff confuses me to no end. I do notice that the Sony 1/3" 3 CCD cameras list 380,000 resolution in thier VX2000 specs. Almost all the 1/2" 3 CCD cameras list 380,000 or better. I guess what I'm wondering here is do the specs say we should be getting 720 x 480 or do they say we were never supposed to. Have the lines been seen in the Sony cameras ? I still wouldn't give up changing lenses to lose those lines at the bottom but, I am curious.

btw, the only other 3CCD cameras listing 270,000 pixels I could find are the Pansonic models that use 3 1/4" CCDs and cost about $2000 less then the XL1S. Unless Canon is just reporting specs more honestly then the other manufacturers it seems like there must have been huge resolution loss somewhere. Could movie mode and low light operation features have cost resolution ?

Another edit because it just gets stranger and stranger...

Canon lists the exact same resolution for the GL-1 which uses 3 1/4" CCD. What did canon do to make 1/3" CCDs perform as bad as 1/4" ones ?

Ken,

To answer your question I asked my friend who uses the PD150 exclusively. The answer is "no" - he's never had any such problems with the PD150. All his is work is strictly for broadcast. Although he "offlines" with FCP3, he onlines in a DigiBeta room and black bars or any frame problems have never popped up.


[editing this a few hours later]

And to add insult to injury - I just inserted the material we shot with the Sony TRV900 --- you guessed it --- NO bars anywhere.

We own three TRV900s. The oldest one which I use for my personal taping does show a bar on the vertical right side of the frame. The camera we used in the shoot we bought last year. Sony must have fixed the problem or we just lucked out.

Ozzie,
That may be the most significant bit of information to help us leverage Canon toward expedient resolution of this matter.

Ken/Ozzie....

If what Ozzie is saying is right, then there must be a "fix". As I said earlier, my VX1000 has vertical black bars up both sides of each frame. If the PD150 doesn't have any, then, I guess I can assume Sony found a way to eliminate them. (I also assume the PD150 grew out of the VX1000)

I think that there's a ray of hope that this isn't directly related to CCD size, although Pete's posting about 270,000 pixels is very interesting. Boy, this is a confusing area, isn't it?

The black bar problem exists, at least on my camera, in 16:9 mode, too. By eyeballing the Firewire output in both 4:3 and 16:9 modes, I can see that the black bar is there in both cases, although slightly less tall, maybe 1 pixel less, in 16:9. The camera appears to use all of the 720 horizontal pixels in both modes, but it's clearly not using the top or bottom of the CCD(s) in 16:9.

My reply here functions only to move the thread to the top of the list. Every Monday morning, Canon USA swings through to read the boards, and I wanted this one to be noticed. As I said earlier I am also passing the full contents of this thread along to certain people at CUSA. This has not been forgotten about.

I am starting to wonder if we are going to hear from Canon about
all of this. It is a little bit too quiet for my taste. Anyone heard
anything yet? Chris?

Corporations tend to move with the speed of a turtle... ponderous and slow and careful. I'll see what I can find out.

A small piece of additional data: the internally-generated color bars do NOT have the black line problem, i.e. they seem to fill the frame.

Because I'm thinking about buying an xl1s, I contacted Canon to get some information about this problem, and got the typical company rhetoric

"In regards to the lines on the Canon XL-1S camera in playback mode, I suspect that this would occur due to a setting not correctly done on the camera.

The Canon XL-1S is an extremely versatile camera, and care must be taken to ensure that the camera is configured properly before you commence shooting."

I doubt it's just a setting, but has anyone managed to get rid of them through different settings? Regardless they shouldn't occur, unless there is a setting called

"Put two pixels of black at the bottom of the image"

a setting? no way...no how!!

Well, now I feel really stupid. I looked on the camera, and, sure enough, there's a little button on the bottom hidden under a rubber panel marked "mess up the image".

Seriously, I got a similar response when I first called Canon tech support. First, there's no obvious setting that would cause this problem. Second, I tried a lot of things to nail the problem down by process of elimination, per my earlier postings.

I'm quite prepared to discover that there's an INTERNAL setting to fix this. But there doesn't seem to be one that's accessible by the user.

>>"In regards to the lines on the Canon XL-1S camera in playback mode, ...<<

In "playback mode"? Funny, I can see the lines on an underscanned monitor while we record. I wonder if Canon knows what anyone is talking about?

Regarding the "setting not correctly done in the camera" -- that might be true if Canon is the one who didn't setup the camera correctly. (Notice the ambiguity in the language.) I think that gobbledigook is insulting to the very experienced technicians I've had look at the problem. Their only dissagreement is whether it's due to shoddy blanking set up at the factory (which can be adjusted by Canon), or a simple design flaw (which can't be easily adjusted if at all.)

Canon really has to come clean and deal with this problem. Stop feeding loyal customers this kind of condescending and infuriating baby talk. Canon must know that many of these "loyal customers" are not amateurs but professionals with a wide array of testing and measuring gear at their disposal.

Just to rub it in again -- the SONY PD150 does NOT have this problem.

<< Ozzie: "Just to rub it in again -- the SONY PD150 does NOT have this problem." >>

This evening I attended a film presentation sponsored by National Geographic featuring a remarkable young Australian journalist (Michael Davie) who travels the world to tell stories-within-the-stories. He generally uses a Sony PD-150. His footage, often taken under stressful, less-than-ideal conditions looked outstanding. And no blanking problems! <g>

I pick this off of another newsgroup, does this answer any of the questions posted, or is it more run around?


"> Using Adobe Premiere I've noticed that when I export single >frames
>of my DV footage (PAL 720x576), there are always two black >bars on
>the left and right sides of the image, about 5 pixels wide each. I
>began to wonder where these empty spaces come from. This is >not
>particularly annoying, but I got really curious about where the >two
>sides of the image data might get lost...

This happens in NTSC because DV captures a square pixel (which is
also what VGA uses). NTSC Television however has a pixel aspect
ratio of 10/11 or about .91. So DV is either 'letter boxed' into the
NTSC frame, or is distorted to fill the frame. The NLE software
software I use (Vegas Video) gives me this option during rendering.

I understand that PAL does not have a square pixel either (59/54 =
1.09). So presumably you would have the same 'problem' only in the
other direction.

Even though it is un-noticeable, I don't like the word 'distortion',
so let Vegas 'letter box' my files and sacrifice a bit of the screen
(which in your case is about 10 pixels)."

Jerry, can you specify this source? Thanks,

what you're saying doesn't make sense to me, jerry. If the DV video size is 720x480 in NTSC and the pixel ratio is .91, then the effective image size would be 720 x 436 (=480*.91). That's an effective letterbox that is 480-436=44 pixels....much more than the 10 pixels we are experiencing. What am I missing, here?

I've got VV3 and will try changing the pixel ratio as you have suggested, however, I think a 9% distortion will be noticeable.

Hello group,
I am not the author of the original post, I only referred to it for the group opinion of its accuracy.

Jerry Bixman

Original Post from
Digital_Video@yahoogroups.com
Author
gtreible1@suscom.net

I don't think that the differing pixel aspect ratio sounds like a plausible explanation, Jerry. It seems to me that if that was true every comparable DV camera's imported footage would show black-bar(s) and the bars would occur in the same frame position. As evidenced by reports here, as well as by the transcript of the message you relayed to us, the bar(s) occur in different locations on different cameras. Some on the sides, some on the bottom.

As far as I understand it, pixel aspect has nothing todo with
resolution (unless your converting from one pixel aspect to
another). Pixel aspect just indicates what the height of a pixel
is in relation to its width. So if you have a pixel aspect of 0.9
your pixels should have a height of 90% of its width. The
NUMBER of pixels (ie, resolution) does NOT change. You also
have a screen aspect ratio that comes into play:

4:3 (NTSC)
16:9 (widescreen)

etc.... Pixel and screen aspects are two different things. The
onyl time you need to worry with pixel aspects is when you
paint pictures in photoshop or do computer generated
imageray (CGI).

Just to add to the discussion with my latest queries from Canon for what it's worth.

"Thank you for your E-mail inquiry.
I would recommend having the camera serviced at a local authorized service facility."

Still no denial or affirmation....I really would have thought that a company trying to sell a NZ$9000 camera would be helpful with issues like this. Guess they sell enough of them not to worry about the odd person asking questions...

Just wondering if anyone has had any luck with information from Canon about this yet? Tried again to get some information but no luck with Canon New Zealand.

Is there any PAL XL1s owner with the problem?

Or is it a NTCS specific problem?

My PAL XL1s has it too.

Damn. I was so hopeful there for a second.. ;)

It's quite funny actually, but I just looked at the Canon demo/promo web video on CanonDV tonight and I saw a black line or two along the bottom of the footage there also! I wonder if they shot it with an xl1s? :)

Of course it was shot on an XL1S! ;-) My next opportunity to interact with Canon USA powers will be at ShowBiz Expo in L.A. in about two weeks. No doubt they are already aware of this thread and the problem, but drafting any kind of corporate response is a lengthy and drawn out process. I can tell you that from direct experience with similar issues years ago on the XL1.

Excellent. Can't wait to hear if you can get some action on this issue.

Good luck - and man I wish we had expo's here in New Zealand like you guys do in the states!