Progressive Footage Looks 'Interlaced'
 

Hi, first ever post so please excuse my ignorance but, here goes. I shot some footage in 25p mode on my two week old XL2 this weekend. It was a close up of a Lava Lamp (Red of all colours) with the wax floating up and down etc.etc. the idea being to make a 'relaxation' DVD type of thing. My only 'problem' is this, when viewing the .avi file on my flat panel computer screen, the curved areas on some of the wax blobs, appears interlaced or maybe like the edges of a bitmap image without anti-aliasing. The resulting DVD though, doesn't display this effect and I was wondering whether it's my monitor or does the 'raw' footage never look as good on a monitor? I thought that as the monitor is non-interlaced that 25p progressive footage would appear ultra smooth or am I missing the point? Just for interest I had the gain set to minus 3, WB locked to Daylight and the exposure (in manual) showing about 2 stops under. The quality is fabulous especially when you consider that it is bright red wax. Second question, why is Red such a difficult colour for video to handle?

Welcome to DVinfo, Mike! This issue had been addressed in detail on these boards. Best thing to do is go to the "search" option and type in XL2 and interlacing or aliasing.
It was actually a similar scenario that was the basis for my first post on these boards.
Take care.

Eric, thanks for the welcome and for your advice. Have searched forums again, I had tried for 'progressive' but using 'aliasing' as the search term came up trumps. Seems it's more an inherent problem with computer displays as the DVD is fine and viewing the footage on a CRT television it seems much better too. Thanks again, Mike.