Image disrupted

The heads of our Canon XL1 camera have just been cleaned by Canon. However, after shooting yesterday we noticed that the picture on the tape has got disrupted sometimes. The picture seems to 'hesitate', it seems like dropped frames.
We changed cameras (the spare XL1) during the shooting, and after this the picture is ok. So its not in the tape. Should I call Canon and tell them they did a bad job cleaning the heads or could it be something else???

[Jeff Donald]

I would send it back to Canon with a copy of the tape with the bad (disrupted) picture. The tape may help them diagnose the remaining problems.

[Don Berube]

Salut Raymond,

Before you send it off to Canon, a couple things:

You stated that you just had the heads cleaned by Canon,,, however, you do not specify how old the XL1 is (about how many hours?), what brand of tape you use, how long has it been since Canon cleaned your heads -and- have you shot any tapes since then and if so, how many/ what brand? Also, do you yourself have your own head cleaning tape? You should.

It could be that you have shot some tape with the XL1 since it was cleaned and perhaps you also switched brands of tape stock, which can cause dirty heads... Actually, do you get any type of "clean heads" or any other type of warning in your viewfinder? It could also be that the XL1 you are using has worn heads, which does happen after a long period of use,,, how old is your XL1? Did you buy it new?

Hope to hear back from you,

- don

[Nathan Gifford]

Did this happen as you were passing through a stop/start? Possibly this might happen as you pass through a stop/start. It also might happen if the heads unload and then you do a restart.

It is really much better to do both a pre and post roll.

If its happening in mid-shoot, that sounds like a problem.

The camera is just over 2 years old. The heads have been cleaned in the beginning of November 2002. We use Sony Premium tapes. <br>
This was the first tape on which we encountered the problem, to my countings we've shot a maximum of 6 tapes since the tapes where cleaned, always the same brand.<br> No warnings have been given in the viewfinder. I also have to mention that during the shoots we discovered that the image was disrupted on playback on this camera, while on the second camera playback with the same tape was fine.<br> The disruption is in a mid-shoot, and can be seen on both the Canon and on our DV-deck.

[Rob Lohman]

So, you are saying:

1. when played back on the recording camera you see the jump
2. when played back on the DV-dack you see the jump
3. when played back on the other camera you do not see the jump?

If point 3 is true, it looks like a playback problem instead of a
recording problem. What are you using to view this on? If it is
a computer they sometimes have a jumping image which is
not in the actual DV stream (as I recently found out).

Otherwise we could hook up (I have an XL1s as well) and see
if we can further figure it out? (I am near Utrecht every two weeks,
next time will be next thursday)

Good luck!

when played back on the other camera we can see the jump as well...
We play it on our computer monitor as well as on our playback PAL monitor.
We've just tested it on a Fuji tape, the disruption stays... So I think we'll send it back (AGAIN!!)

[Rob Lohman]

Best of luck then and keep us posted on how it goes. Thanks!