My guess is that you are judging the quality of your image by looking at it on a computer monitor, and not an external HD monitor, correct? You can’t do that.
#2 Playback is blurry
Shane’s Stock Answer #2:
ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL NTSC MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.
1. Disable overlays on the canvas
2. Make sure you’ve rendered everything (no green bars at the top of the timeline
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24787
DV (and HD) footage requires large amounts of data and many computations. In order to maintain frame rate and be viewable at a normal size, only about one-fourth of the DV (and HD) data is used in displaying the movie to the screen. However, the DV (HD) footage is still at full quality, and is best viewed thru a TV or NTSC monitor (or HD monitor) routed thru your camera or deck or capture card.
Don’t forget, the viewer is a viewer, it shows you what you have. The canvas is also a viewer AT THE RESOLUTION YOU SET.
Shane
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net