Poor DV capture quality

I just switched over from a Windows/PC to a Mac and love it. However, I am having problems with capturing video off a Sony TRV310 DV camcorder. The digital video (going through the 400 firewire port) doesn't look too bad in the preview window, but going full screen using iMovie, QuickTime (on the Mac AND on the PC) the video quality is absolutely terrible. Pixilated, low res...unacceptable. The video captured from the firewire port on the PC looks fine, but the audio has 1/4-1/2 second clips taken out of it...a problem with my PC/Windows machine. That's one of the reasons I got a Mac so I could do better captures.
Any ideas on what I am doing wrong, what needs to be configured?
Thanks.
Matt

You should use the head cleaner every 100 hrs. or so and ideally you would take it in once every few years to get a professional cleaning, depending on the camera.
There's also cleaning of the lenses and light dusting of the camera body every week or so, depending on how often you shoot. Make sure you use a microfiber cloth that's safe for use on camera lenses, since other subtly-abrasive cloths that may appear to be acceptable may scratch and subsequently damage the lens.
Start out with a head Cleaner. The ones that look like a tape that you play in the camera for a few seconds. That'll probably fix your problem in the future. It it doesn't you might want to think about sending the camera in to be cleaned.
For now "capture now" using the non-controllable device setting to avoid any errors
Hey Jim, was this the kid you were talking about?

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Welcome to Lenovo Community Forums!
I’m sorry to hear that you are having trouble playing HD videos in your Lenovo T530.
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Hi All,
I've been running the trial of PE7 for a few weeks comparing against my existing copy of Pinnacle 10 and trial of Power Director. I love the interface and edit abilities, however when I generate DVD files and view them the result from PE7 is of a much lower quality than from Pinnacle or Power Director.
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Dale,
The test of each program would be to author a DVD (use RW, so you don't spend a bunch of $ on test DVD's) and then watch that through a DVD software player on the computer, or on a set-top player to TV.
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Hunt

Poor DV capture quality

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