I received my firewire cable and imported the video from my Panasonic PV-DV203D handheld video camera into iMovie '08 (7.1), on my Macbook Pro (1st gen) running on Leopard (10.5). When I play the video footage back in full screen mode on my Apple Cinema 23" display, the video footage appears pixelated and frankly like crap.

I expected since the Apple Cinema display is a HD monitor that it should look heaps better than what it did. I was expecting the same quality as I see on it when I watch a DVD movie. The video footage looks OK in the default window size, but not full screen.

Is this how it will look on a TV when I burn it to DVD? Is it possible to import into iMovie and keep the same quality as actually recorded and would show being played on the TV from the video camera?

And to think I was going to re-use my tape now that I had imported and backed up. Good thing I didn't in case I need to reimport it now.

Is it possible to post a screenshot?

It may also be that DVD player seems to scale things quite well...either way, I couldn't really pinpoint a problem without seeing what the footage looked like.

Well it is G-14 classified, but for you I think I can make an exception :P. Yah, no problems. I'll see what I can do about a screen shot and get it posted up.

IS that a HD or SD camera?
Normal SD will look pretty bad on the ACD.
It might also suffer from the computer having to work too hard to make it look good on the screen.
Try running the footage back through your camera and output to a normal TV.
Should look a-OK.

Edit: Try Apple's iMovie forum for solutions too.

You may also want to check that in iMovie you have the playback setting set to "Highest" quality. [ Preferences -> Playback -> highest ] If this is not selected the 'apparent' quality of your movie can appear poor.

Also I'd suggest creating a virtual a disc image first (of your project) which you can mount with Apple's DVD player and test out before burning your DVD.

It's SD, that makes me feel better. So once its actually burnt to DVD and played on a real TV is should be fine I take it? I've taken it straight from the camera and into iMovie.

It is a bit hard to run it through the TV as I don't own one. My MBP and ACD is my "TV". Besides that hurdle, how do you run the footage back through the camera? Can you play stuff from iMovie and it spits it out to the camera via the iLink connection?

I took a look in preferences and couldn't find the Playback setting you are talking about. Are you using iMovie 08?

I did however find something in Preferences which might have solved the problem. It appears iMovie 08 defaults to importing video as 960 x 540 instead of 1920 x 1080. The Fullscreen playback size setting is also defaulted to "Full screen". So effectively it was pixelated because it was pulled in at a small size and being expanded to fit the ACD. When I changed it to "Actual Size" I realized that the imported video was actually pretty small.

So I'm going to reimport my video at 1920x1080 and see if that has any affect in the quality of the playback.

Part 1: My belief is that SD usually looks pretty ordinary on computer screens esp when blown up! Should look just fine on a normal telly.
Part: Yes - you can run the footage back through iLink/ firewire via the camera which is then plugged into a TV and watch things develop that way. That's the way I do it. Works a treat and gives the reassurance of what you're seeing onscreen on a telly will mimic what 90% of other viewers will see too.

Sweet, thanks. I'm still new to video editing on the Mac and have lots to learn. Time to start creating my "movie" now.