Improving picture quality (bad pixillation)

Question

I'm trying to make a DVD from a miniDV tape I made of a concert last year. When I watch the show on my camcorder's screen, it looks fine. But during import to iMovie, the details (such as people's faces) I see on my Mac's screen are quite pixillated and undefined.
My initial guess as to why this is happening was because of the relatively low lighting in the auditorium where the concert took place. But, as I said, it looks fine on the camcorder's screen. And the faces that are unclear had plenty of spotlight (and not enough to wash them out).
Is there anything else that might be the cause of this? What can I do to smooth out the details? Thanks.
N. B.: I am working on this in iMovie 5. Do you think putting it into iMovie 8 would help?

Answer 1

A camcorder's screen is tiny compared with a Mac screen. Anything may look finely detailed on a teeny 2.5" (camcorder) screen, but when it gets blown up to 12" or more on a computer screen you tend to see its shortcomings.
When you say "pixellated" I'm not sure that your idea of pixellated and others' ideas are the same. Yes, faces may look "splodgy" and unclear if shot in low light. "Pixellation" is the name usually given to the 'mosaic'-like effect of missing data when a tape's replayed: small squares of inappropriate brightness, usually the 'leftovers' from a previous frame if data's missing from the current frame (..possibly because of dirty replay heads, playing an LP tape in a different camcorder, the result of tape scrunch, or bad tape-to-head contact).
Some camcorders - and it used to be the same with Sony monitors, too - automatically 'cover up' missing data by inserting data from the last good frame, so that in replay on the camcorder you don't see any faults. This doesn't happen when the data's sent down the FireWire cable to another device ..which is when missing data shows up as pixellation.
This might happen if:
(a) it's an old tape, which has not been played for a year or so, and the tape layers are sticking together and not transporting properly through the camcorder;
(b) the tape is moist, so the layers are sticking;
(c) it's an LP (long play) recording, and there's mis-tracking through the transport system ..or if the LP tape is played on a different device than the one which recorded it (LP recordings have very narrow track widths, and aren't guaranteed to line up with any other devices than the one which recorded them);
(d) mix'n'match any of the above.
Try fast-forwarding and rewinding the tape several times before playing any more of it. Let it slowly come up to room temperature if it's been stored somewhere cold. If it's an LP tape, let the camcorder come up to room temperature before use, so that any minor temperature-induced expansion can happen and so that the camera's in the same warm state it was in when the tape was recorded.
It won't be any better in iMovie '08.