tarheelmommy said:
Glad you think it's as bad as I do.
That shouldn't be classed as "poor quality", it should be classed as a fault.
The problem you're experiencing here is that for some reason MPEG Streamclip thinks your video's resolution is 352x288. This means that when you export at 384x288 it's not properly engaging its scaling filter. The result is the mess you're getting.
What you need to do is manually specify a resolution of 720x480, AIC as the codec, with uncompressed audio. Don't select deinterlace. Hopefully the resulting video will have a frame rate of 29.97, but if it turns out to be something else, you'll need to type that into the frame rate box in MPEG Streamclip too.
The video that comes out will have visible interlacing, but that's what you want if you're going to make a DVD.
Which moves us onto our second problem. Apple decided a few years back that people didn't make DVDs or watch home movies on their TVs anymore, so stopped supporting interlaced video. I think iMovie HD ('06) is the last version to support it. That's why I suggested you try Adobe Premiere Elements. It may even recognise your camcorder and allow you to skip the MPEG Streamclip step.
For the record, muxing, AIC and field order are not the problem. (I'm 99% sure.)
