Canon XL1 Nightmare

[sb]

It sounds like his camera was having troubles, since the VHS worktapes were
fine. It looks like they may now be your masters.

It could also be your deck not being able to playback the XL1 tapes
properly, but again, most likely, it's because there was something wrong
with the camera.

You could try to get the same XL1 back and see if you can playback with it,
or another XL1. If you do manage to get playback, the first thing you should
do is CLONE the tapes onto DVCam or DVCPro to edit.

Otherwise, you'll be the film using the VHS tapes.

(sorry I can't be of any more help.)

(and, no, HMI lights can't damage a camera unless you place it too close the
the light head and the camera melts.)

 sb

On 5/27/03 6:52 PM, "Richard Brown" <richard at go2rba.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I have a uniquely terrible problem which has arrived at my facility.
> About 50 Mini DV tapes representing 3 years of preproduction, and 3
> months of shooting, of a Canon XL1 shot feature film production.
> 
> Now, the problems...
> 
> 1) Massive audio dropouts, up to a full tape at a time. The "spikes" of
> audio which are audible are on the order of milliseconds, not long
> enough to hear a single word.
> 
> 2) Mosaic video dropouts, visually looking to be keyed to motion,
> either of camera or of talent. This can be merely a sprinkling of non
> regular groups of pixels or huge amounts of mosaic noise, again, keyed
> apparently to any form of motion. It defies the "dirty head" issue as
> on the same tape, there may be a section which is fine, with bad in
> front and behind it.
> 
> 3) The problem increases continuously over time from the beginning of
> the shoot to the end of the shoot. The latter tapes seem wholly
> unusable, with the earliest tapes showing fewer problems, but not
> without problems.  Still, dirty heads make more sense in that the last
> tapes are essentially full time bad. The video NEVER goes out, simply
> the mosaic distortion mounts.
> 
> This is the second time I've encountered nightmarishly bad video/audio
> from the XL1, the first time being a network show which ran by in the
> middle of the night for us to check out a bad XL1 tape (they couldn't
> read it, and neither could I, but the actual XL1 which shot the tape
> played the same tape back fine.)
> 
> Some of the early footage utilizing the on-camera mic shows good video
> and audio (NOT ALL, I've seen plenty of bad on-camera mic as well), but
> I hear from the director there was an outboard mixer with a pro shotgun
> mic for many of the scenes which fall apart... Thus I wonder about
> XL1's with Hi-Z / Low-Z mismatches as well on how, in this situation,
> they misbehave.  Suggesting there was no impedance mismatch, work tapes
> in VHS were struck at the time of shooting from the XL1 outputs
> featuring good video and audio.
> 
> Also, the film was lit with HMI.
> 
> So my questions:
> 
> Anyone had these problems and fixed them? From the network issue, I
> understand XL1's can get finicky, only able to play back their own
> tapes (and vice-versa) when in odd calibration. Is there a work-around?
> "Digital tracking?" -- which is to say both XL1's and Sony PD150's are
> nothing but a mess of tiny analog trim pots under their covers.
> 
> Will audio impedance problems destroy video and audio as recorded but
> output normally through the video and audio outs on the XL1?
> 
> Will HMI ballasts and their frequencies destroy XL1 shooting?
> 
> Compounding our problem, the pro shooter with the XL1 in question just
> sent it for full maintenance, thus ending possibility of running the
> tapes through the shooting camera, UNLESS Canon allows the camera to
> stay in its state of  mis-calibration, assuming it would otherwise deny
> playback of existing tapes.
> 
> Stuck between a huge rock and an expansive, EXPENSIVE hard place...
> S.O.S.!
> 
> 
> Richard Brown
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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