I'm thinking you are watching some interlacing artifacts and
whatnot. Do you have the ability to put some samples up on
a website for us to see? Raw DV would be preferred or
uncompressed BMP stills. If you put up compressed movies it
will introduce new problems which aren't in the footage.

Basically I've almost never seen any of what you describe with
my XL1S and I think the image looks WAY better than what I'm
getting on my analogue cable TV.

Basically talking about such issues is very difficult without the
pictures behind it. If you can't host pictures yourself we can
probably work out some other place to host them so that
everybody can see!

Sorry if this is a stupid question but are we talking about DV or could this be video coming out of the camera in MPEG4 or some other low bandwidth codec? What you describe sounds surprisingly similar to my camera's MPEG1 memory stick video mode.

I'm talking about DVout and S-video out
 

Ignacio, the output isn't MPEG4. Basically it's the image stored on my MiniDV tape. My output from the camera is generally via the composite AVout port on the camcorder and to the AVin on the TV, VCR, or NTSC monitor, but I've also viewed the output via S-video out on the camcorder to S-video in on a NTSC monitor which is a bit better.

Here is a 3 second DV clip showing inter-line twitter
 

Here is a 3 second clip (9 Mb) of some footage from my Panasonic PV-DV852. Generally right mouse click over the hyperlink will allow you to save to your hard drive.

The footage is stock AVI (same as MiniDV I'm told) and was not compressed in any way. The clip was actually extracted from my camcorder via the Firewire, or Ilink port into my computer. Quality was the same with two different trial capture software, one expensive and one innexpensive, and is typical of what I see on the TV, and NTSC monitor as well.

There is a lot of inter line twitter of the picnic table. This is typical of pictures taken indoors and outdoors at all different settings.

Note that many computer monitors will show even more inter-line twitter than a TV. Better TVs and NTSC monitors show a little better quaility but the effects are still very much there.

http://www.benwiens.com/temporary.html

XL1S
 

Rob you mentioned: "Basically I've almost never seen any of what you describe with my XL1S and I think the image looks WAY better than what I'm getting on my analogue cable TV."

That is what's so frustrating. People are mentioning that their MiniDV footage is superior to what they see on TV, yet my footage is much worse that what I see on TV. Yet my camcorder is a high end 1CCD, suggested retail price was originally around US$1,600.

Maybe it's broken?

If I play something I've shot off my XL1 or my ZR40 right to my TV, the picture will be crisper and sharper than any VHS tape I own.
However, despite its crispness, it may not be as pretty if that VHS tape is showing a movie that has been shot on 33mm film, with a professional lighting crew and DP.

1CCD cameras need to have a low pass filter, which is designed to blur high frequency information (to prevent false colors). Unfortunately they also blur some low frequency information, which makes the image blurrier.

3CCD cameras like the VX2000/PD150 and DVX100 tend to give better pictures than 1CCD cameras for various reasons.

The weirdness on the brown picnic you see is probably a combination of a number of things.

As to why your footage doesn't look as good as TV, it's not because it wasn't shot on digibeta. Lighting, post processing, steadiness, and the camera are major factors in determining image quality.

Ohkay, I checked the footage and it basically it looks very good
on my laptop. Yes I see some stairstepping on the table which
is probably due to some added sharpness your camera is doing?
Have checked the manual to see if you can change this?

Is my XL1S footage looking better? Yes, but not as much as the
difference between VHS and your footage. Basically, I don't have
any VHS tape or TV transmission that is better than your video
in overal quality. Your footage is a bit overexposed (hot) though
and has some minor problems like stairstepping (aliasing) on
the table and a bit of flickering in the fence.

But those are only some minor problem that might disappear
if you can turn the sharpness down or perhaps expose a bit
better?

It sounds like somehow you are seeing a lot of extreme things
that I'm not? Perhaps something else is wrong?

I checked the footage again in my NLE and it has indeed a bit of
extreme stairstepping / pixelation. But only on those non-straight
lines. But on a TV you should not even see those (normally).

I'm not too familair with your camera, so I don't know if this is
normal for that cam or not. Again, this might be due to heavy
sharpening the camera is performing. Check for that first!

you shoot against the sun.
no camera will produce good image that way friend

No the sky is really bright. A polarizer filter would help.

Inter-line twitter there in all conditions
 

Thanks for all the comments. Basically the inter-line twitter and artifacts are there in all conditions more or less. As well the artifacts can still be seen very much on my TV.

I think Rob's comment that it might be due to excessive sharpening makes sense right now. My camera has a lot of manual controls, but no sharpening adjustment is listed in the manual. I'm going to try and talk to someone at Panasonic but right after Christmas they seem to be too busy.

Gain settings
 

I would check your gain settings, set it to none if possible. You said it was a high end 1 CCD there should be a way to set the gain levels. My Gl2 and my XL1s and my old dcr950 had these if you are shooting in auto mode I can guarantee that it will boost those gain levels. The gain normally will affect how grainy a picture looks in dark areas but it could be causing some other compression artifacts as well. Just a thought

If the intention is to do composite, editing and colour correction in FCP through DV, would i be better off having footage originate on a hi-end dvcam like the Sony DSR-570WSP and native dv then footage of a digibeta then down-converted to dv? Assuming costs are cheaper for the dvcam camera and media?? Or will downconverted digibeta footage still look that slight bit better?

Cheers.

If the final format is (limited) DV then the camera that creates
the best pictures should win, because the format is the same.