Canon XH A1s (Grain Problems)

[mseidner24]

I've been an owner of the Canon XH A1s for a year now and it left me frustrated than happy. I know all the settings in the camera but for some reason the quality is terrible. The quality looks like a grainy standard definition.
I've tried about everything to change the quality:
*Always film in Manual Mode.
*Gain at 0 & sometimes -3.
*AGC & AWB are off.
*ND Filer is off.
*24fps, Shutter speed is 1/48
*Aperture is always F1.6
*SIGNAL STD: HD
*I've tried everything in all the forums. (And nothing worked)
*I use Final Cut Express. (I'm going to capture my footage on Final Cut Pro 7 to see if there is a difference in quality)
*I've tried about 40 different presets available online and that never helped.
*And I also restarted the camera about 10 times.
No matter how well lit the background is, it seems like there is always grain somewhere in the image. The grain appears mostly on dark objects. When there's no grain on the dark objects, the grain appears on light colored objects. Is there anything that can be done to fix this or is something wrong with my camera?

[aedipuss]

why are you shooting 24f? it can only be used for set shots from a tripod with no movement. it's also not 24p. it's 24p encoded into a 60i stream. anything using it will assume it's 60i unless you inverse telecine to 24p.

try setting the cam on full auto and 60i. setting the aperture and shutter speed to fixed values is just wrong 99.99% of the time. once you get the hang of that then move on to one manual adjustment at a time.

[mseidner24]

I can understand why I should change to 60i but changing to full auto will cause more grain, right?

[aedipuss]

no. full auto will give you the correct exposure levels which will get rid of the grain.

[mseidner24]

I just did a test shoot outside and it looks like everything is good except there is still grain in the places with shadows. How can I fix that? If I try -3db, the grain also appears on off-white colors.