Sony DCR-SR85 looks grainy in premiere elements 7

Question

I have been using a Sony DCR-SR85 video camera with a 60 gb hard drive. I noticed latey that when I'm recording my wife's horse in the arena the video looks a little grainy when I down load it into Premier Elements 7. I say grainy but that may not be the right word. The corrals have horizontal pipes and the pixels with the pipes almost make a wave in the background. The horse looks fine in the video, I'm shooting in standard mode but thinking of going to high quality mode to see if this helps. I render work area in the timeline after I download the video to Pre 7. It still looks a little wierd whenever you get around anything with close multiple horizontal lines. (like a corral)
Gib

Answer 1

Your camcorder is what's called a "hybrid" and can shoot in a variety of standard definition modes and quality levels. It's hard to advise you without knowing some specifics.
What mode are you shooting in? If you're going to edit your video in Premiere Elements, you will need to shoot in HQ mode.
When you set up your Premiere Elements project, which project settings did you use? You must use the Hard Disk/Flash Memory Camcorder/Standard Definition project preset for this type of camcorder.
How did you get the video from your camcorder to your computer? In version 7, you should be attaching the camcorder to your comptuer via USB and then using Premiere Elements Media Downloader (under the Organize tab, go to Get Media/From AVCHD or Other Hard Disk Camcorder) to import the video into your project.
Although, by nature, your computer will emphasize your camcorder's interlacing (which appear as horizontal lines) and these will not be issues when you play your video on your TV, there are certainly video issues that are unavoidable. As all videographers know, you should never shoot video of a person wearing a pin-striped shirt or a person standing in front of venetian blinds. Narrow lines produce a distortion called a moire -- and, if this is what you're seeing, there's not a lot that can be done about that except avoid shooting it, unfortunately.