When I hook my camcorder up to the tv and watch the video footage straight from the camera the picture quality is fine but when I transfer it to my pc I get motion smearing. Could this be because of my graphics card, software or firewire cable?

Please help

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The tv picture is made up of horizontal lines.
Your camcorder scans the picture twice, each scan taking in alternate horizontal lines (i.e first scan odd lines, 2nd scan even lines)

Your tv scans in alternate lines as well, so your camcorder footage looks fine on the tv. With me so far?

Each scan takes place a fraction of a second apart, so although the scans are largely similar, if the subject or camera is fast moving then the subject postion in the frame has changed slightly by the time the second scan takes place.

Your computer monitor scans in a progressive line order (one by one rather than alternate) so it shows up this difference as both scans (fields) are displayed plack at the same time, so you see the difference between the two scans, usually manifested as a combing pattern around the edges of the moving subject.

Rest assured that your edited footage will appear as normal on a tv set, if you wish to output your footage to the web then you may want to de interlace your footage before compression.

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[MarkE19]

A good night out on the was it Roy

DJ, how are you connecting the camcorder to PC? You should use a firewire connection and not USB to get the best possible PQ.
What software are you useing to capture the video, and with what settings? You should capture the video as .AVI files as these are not compressed on capture and therefore give a 100% quality copy of what is on the tape, as long as you use a firewire connection.

What Roy has said above is also very true. An interlaced picture will never look as good on a progressive screen. Also a PC monitor will not give as good quality video replay as it is basically not desinged to. Edit the footage and create a DVD and see what that looks like when played on the TV - with a bit of luck you should be able to get good results.

Mark.