On Friday, my XL1S was performing perfectly - recording and playing back without incident. SUnday when I returned to my office, I discovered the camera was unable to record or play back without - well I can only describe them as green and pink "Pixels" appearing on the image. Old tapes played back showed clear images on other decks but not the XL1S - spots of pink and green flickered in over 70% of the image. Newly recorded images from the XL1S showed this pixellation on any deck. Is this what a magnetized video head would do to images? A head cleaner had no effect but demagnetizing tapes are not available locally. ANY HELP BEFORE I SEND IT OFF TO THE FACTORY I'D APPRECIATE.

The camera was purchased in November of '02 and has seen < 50 hours of use. No jolts to the camera between when it worked and didn't - it sat on the tripod powered down. Anyone ever used a manual degausser? Should I try this?

Beyond using a good head cleaning cassette you should not try to self-repair this. Do not even think about any magnetic treatment. Since the camera's still under warranty you should just let Canon service do it's stuff. Be sure to send a sample tape along with the camera to help the techs see the problem.

As your signature says:Too many nuckleheads (sic) think they know things about things they know nothing about...
<g>
Good luck.

Thank you for your reply Ken. I suppose i had come to the same conclusion myself but was holding out for a simpler solution. Just seemed odd to me that something could spontaneously "break" like that. Thank you also for pointing out the misspelling in the sig file... would it had not appeared anyway but... LOL Be well and thank you again,

Keith

Any chance the cam was exposed to something (salt water, radiation (radio, electrical), etc).

You might double check the batteries and make sure you are not dealing with a power problem.

Thanks Nathan,


Actually, you've hit upon something that troubles me. My office is on the second floor (top floor) of a building that is a couple of miles from Norfolk Naval Air Station. The aircraft have been flying maneuvers regularly these last few weeks. While on a shoot last week, I kept getting strong RF hits on the wireless stuff so I was pondering the possibility that RF might have caused this problem? Any insight?

I could understand problems on tapes that were being recorded when you got the wireless hits, but I would be surprised if permanent damage was caused to the XL1s and not to other devices.

Interesting that you should bring that up because a sony TRV-11 we use as a deck had also been effected. I was told that Sunday (same day as the other problem) the video from the sony camera of our office was tinted red. Thios problem has self corrected but I think reinforces the military aircraft theory. Its off to Canon tomorrow in any case. My thanks to all those who viewed and replied to this post. Be well.

Keith