[Seth823]

All I WAS trying to do was to crop the image. I changed the size from 720by480 pixels to 720by400 pixels – just chopping off the top and bottom. Even when the crop was the only shift, the interlacing thing is still a problem. I understand that stretching and expanding or even shrinking an image could result in a reinterpretation of the image (this happens with all digital media) but to merely crop off the top and bottom of an image and have the quality of the remaining image change is something that doesn’t make sense to me. What makes Final Cut different from Photoshop in this respect? Why would the program need to mess with the image instead of the process merely being subtractive? Is there a “smart” option that I can turn off to stop it from doing this?

I’m just a bit confused. Thanks, though, for the tips about vertical shifting and whatnot- I hadn’t considered that could be such a problem…