Hey out there in DVinfoLand. I signed up today but have been lerking around here for a couple months on and off now taking it all in. Anyhow, I'll cut to the chase since I can always introduce myself in that other forum section. ;)

I've had a Canon GL1 since August of 2000. I used the camera off and on shooting footage over the course of a year before I really jumped into editting on my new PC NLE. And then I noticed something... In the past couple months I've started to see a fine blue line across the bottom of the frame of video about two lines up. I'd say that it's about 2 or 3 pixels tall once captured into Premiere with the center being about 80% opaque bright blue (the shade of blue you get with unrecorded footage when you watch it on the camera) and the line above and below are much lighter, perhaps 20% opaque at the most.

To be honest, I'm sh*tting bricks over here because I think the camera is just out of manufacturer's warentee (anyone help me with this?) and I can only imagine the huge expense it must be to have one of these cameras fixed.

I've treated the camera very well. The camera is always in a softbag when not in use and tethered to at least 3 points on my body so I don't drop and destroy it. I'd say there's about 20 hours of record time on the unit, and another 10 to 15 hours of editting and logging time on the heads. That's it, nothing major by any standards. Never dropped the camera or had a problem until this.

Anyone know what this could be? Has anyone had to have their GL1 or XL1 repaired and can tell me if I should remortgage my house or sell off one of my kids? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, as a side note... today I was rewinding a tape that was in the camera and had ventured into the unused portion. Suddenly the damn thing stopped and starts flashing "EJECT THE CASSETTE" and the powerlight is blinking read (in vcr mode). What's up with that?! In camera mode it won't let me record on that tape now. I stick with TDK stuff and haven't changed but for 1 or 2 Panasonics I used really early on in the life of the camera. I swear if this camera is going to start dying on me less than 2 years into it with so little use I'm gonna kick someone's ass over at Canon. ;-D

I can post pictures if anyone wants to see exactly what I'm talking about with the blue line by the way.

Thanks again!

Yes, please post pictures with the least amount of compression possible.

I took this from video shot with the camera, oh, I think it's about a month old. That's me by the way, what a dork.

Anyway, the link below is a still captured from Premiere as a .9 rectangular pixel 710x480 in size. It was then dropped into Photoshop and saved as a JPG with quality of 12 (highest quality) so there should be very little compression. You can see what I'm talking about very clearly across the bottom of the frame and it seems to show up very well against white backgrounds as opposed to anything with color.

www.hexographica.com/anders/gl1_artifact_01.jpg

Oh and while I'm here, what's up with those black bars on the sides? Is that normal?

I just realized that the combination of Internet Explorer's white background when you're viewing an image and the naturally white tones of the image make it difficult to see the line in all its blue liney quality. So I doctored up that image a bit and put it up.

www.hexographica.com/anders/gl1_artifact_02.jpg

The image is now 500px tall with a black border added to the top and bottom. I also stuck a couple arrows in there for good measure.

That's pretty normal, though it does seem a bit more pronounced. It should never show up on your TV though. Same goes with the black bars on the side. The XL1 does this as well.

To see an example picture from the XL1 just go to:

http://207.168.10.78/redifer/XL1.jpg

I also added a fake black border around my picture. I am the guy in the background, not the moron holding the CD. But you will still see a slight blue line at the bottom of the screen.

Well that's definitely some good news. I was starting to really worry that something horrible like the CCD had burned out on a line or something equally expensive to fix. Heh! Looking at your picture it seems you have the exact same thing happening but because the colors in the scene aren't stark white and the blue line doesn't show as much. This is the case with mine too so I guess I don't have anything to worry about Phew!

Now to figure out why suddenly a tape that was fine 2 days ago now triggers my camera to freak out. Also have to figure out why I can't export to tape with the cam... another thread another time I guess. ;)

Thanks for your help Joe!