"I beg to differ....frame mode is MOST CERTAINLY interlaced. You just can't see the interlacing because there are no temporal distortions."

Define interlaced then, please. Are you talking about what's output to a TV over S-video (always interlaced) or what's recorded to the computer after video capture? What's recorded to the computer after video capture is progressive footage, 30 fps, each frame of which is distinct, film-like, and can be captured, rotoscoped, etc. You can totally tell the difference between that and truly interlaced footage in Premier - truly interlaced footage not only has the artifacts you described, but also plays interlaced on the screen. Frame mode output does not do that.

DV standard, by definition, is interlaced. It can't be anything else. The reason frame mode doesn't look interlaced is the ingeniousness of Canon tricks with recording two simultaneous fields.

Read the article on Chris' website on how frame mode works...from the horse's mouth

When edited in Adobe Premier, the video is unquestionably non-interlaced. You can capture or rotoscope any one of the 30 frames per second you want and it looks fine. So what is the difference between that and being non-interlaced? The internal format on the DV tape? Who cares about that.

Bill's right, of course, but Peter hit the nail on the head. Canon's hardware interlacing scheme sure makes shooting video for web delivery a lot easier.

Interlaced or non, I output for TV, so it is the frame mode vs 1/30 that concerns me. So, is there a consensus on whether the 30fps effects degrades quality in terms of saturation, contrast, sharpness? Even depth of field? I ask because the 1/8 shutter looks quite muddy to me even when shooting still subjects

Canon's Frame Movie Mode will degrade sharpness regardless of shutter, because it's an interpolation process.

robert, i'm asking about the 1/30 digital effect, not the frame movie mode

Right. So I think the answer is still what I suspected. The 1/30 sec shutter speed is exactly that. It should not affect the quality at all. But the video is still interlaced and would need to be deinterlaced by your editing program if you wanted it to be.

But since you're outputting to TV, which is always interlaced unless you're talking about DVDs and ED- or HDTV, the 1/30 sec shutter, in Normal Mode, should be fine for you. What you'll see are slightly less smooth motions, but there's no reason you should see any image quality loss like you *might* (and I emphasize might because I still don't have 100% faith that frame mode degrades anything) see in frame mode.

Yes frame mode and 1/30 shutter is interlaced, but there are ZERO motion artifacts like there are in standard interlaced video (like that from just about any other video camera that preceded the XL1), so no de-interlacing is required. It's great for frame grabs. Deinterlacing will make your video look a bit more blocky and do nothing for the motion.

Last question, then- camera and subject motion out of the question. Would the 30fps effect have some sort of quality degradation such as the 18db gain?

Nope...in fact 30fps adds smoothness to motion, especially pans.