Why do my Quicktime movies look so pixelated?
 

The same quicktime footage encoded and burned to DVD plays back much, much better on my iMac. Why is that? If I play the Quicktime file directly it looks very pixelated. I don't like to let clients see footage played back in FinalCut or Quicktime player for this reason, and it's a hassle burning everything to DVD everytime I want to show it. Can anyone explain why this is happening? Footage is originating on an XL2.

In quicktime open the movie's properties window (command+J), click on the video track, click the Visual Settings tab, on the bottom right you can check high quality. Then save. Be careful when you save, because it will also save where you are in the movie's timeline; so the next time you open it, the movie won't start from the beginning.
If you look at the visual settings and the high quality box is already checked, it means that your preferences are set to play back HQ by default... I think it's safest to have HQ OFF in the preferences, so that the pixelated video reminds you to check and save high quality -so when you give it to a client you are sure it will open in HQ.

Thanks Aric. That did it. I'm puzzled why Apple would have it default to lower quality playback. Bizarre.