Dirty tape heads, media that wasn't depacked, change of media brand (dry to lubricated/lubricated to dry) can all do this. Airports have never nailed my media, and I fly a LOT. Like at least 2 times a week.
Has the cam been dropped? Ever seen good media from it? Try a short 2 minute shot at home, see what it provides you. Is the media blocky on the cam, or in capture? Both? That would reek of out of alignment head, or bad media. Did you depack media?

Liquid, I've only shot a bit on the Gl's, but have years on the Xl1 and 1s.
What tape brand are you using? It's been my experience that the Canon series prefer the Sony tapes over anything else. Other cameras prefer panasonic or maxell.. so much for being "standard"

Since you shot "all day", did you happen to shoot in EP or LP mode? Shooting in extended play mode opens you up to a lot of errors in both audio and video. I would suggest never shooting in anything but SP mode. There is a lot of theory behind this, but the main rule of thumb is, the faster the tape moves across the heads, the better quality the video will be.

Since the camera is new, you can rule out dirty heads. However, the Canon cameras are very suseptable (at least in my experience) to alignment problems due to internal movement while moving the camera around. A sharp bumb can knock the alignment off, requiring adjustment by a tech. To prevent this, make sure you transport the camera with a tape loaded. This will keep everything nice and tight inside. We followed this rule, and even after bouncing around the desert in a hummer, the camera worked great.

Hope this helps...

Oh, I fogot to ask.. were you playing the footage back through your camera, or a vtr? If you were using a vtr, try playing it back through the camera.. this has saved me on more than one occassion.

Canon XM2 [PAL version of GL2 ] here . . sympathies!

Great camera . .EXCELLENT camera . . for the money . .

I've had a problem with pixels, not BIG blockies. My solution and one I do as a matter of course now, is to FF and REW on brand new tapes - regardless. You might wanna FF and REW on shot footage. My belief, and speaking with others, is that the actual tape tension sometimes goes off. Doing the FF and REW "appears" to eliminate this.

Example: Shot onto NEW tape; got pixels on playback - meaning I did REW to review; not enough to establish or re-establish correct tape tension; FF and REW - no pixels. Yes I know you must have REW to Preview your work, but it may need to be done from beggining to end and then back again - yeah? -HO! Make sure you got the tape's Lock on - don't want any nasty surprises - eh?

Anyways give it a go . . .can't do any harm . . you may actually get a solution too.

Grazie

>Did you depack media?

Spot or anyone. I don't know that term. What does depack the media mean?

I'm not sure if this is what SPOT means, but I've made it a habit of running the a new tape front to end and back (FF, then REW). I was told by a friend that this removes any tension on the tape spools caused by the [high speed] manufacturing process. I have never had any problems with any footage.