Why does my dvd i burn look boxy after i dwon load it from my dv cam it looks perfect on the cam?

Question

why does my dvd look

Answer 1

If it is highly compressed video normally associated with still cams that happen to take video (and possibly even some hard drive, flash memory or DVD based camcorders when set to lowest quality - but longest record time), then it is because of video data compression. The reason it looks good on the "DV cam" screen is because the screen is little - when you go full screen, you discover how much information was discarded in the compression process.

video compression = discarded data = reduced video quality

That's why many people continue to go back to miniDV tape based camcorders. DV/HDV compresses the least of the available consumer storage media. It is also one - of several - reasons the professionals continue to use miniDV tape - and if they use hard drive or flash memory, the video is stored in DV/HDV format (same as miniDV tape), not some other highly compressed MPEG2/AVCHD "lossy" format. (Check the FireStore external hard drives and the Panasonic P2 cards...)