Picture quality/sharpness

[jgarnold]

I have been creating movies from my digital camcoredr for some time using Ulead VideoStudio and the inbuilt firewire port on my PC yet the output movies do not have the same shrpness/quality as commercially created movies. I realise that the camera is the biggest factor in this but what about TITLES added to the movie during editing (with VideoStudio) and also scanned (still) pictures. They are not affected by quality of the camcorder.
What affects the sharpness/quality of the output movie? Is it the quality of the encoder? I have also used TMPGEnc to endode without any real noticeable difference. Would Adobe Premiere create movies of a higher quality?
I have noticed that when I view a single frame of an edited movie in the preview window (in VideoStudio) it is sharper than when viewing the movie I have created.
Why are titles on commercially manufactured movies so much sharper?
Please help.
I am pulling what is left of my hair out.
Thanks
John

[bugster]

Not really an authoring question, moving you.

And to partly answer your questoin, one of the main things to affect the final quality is of course the source material. After that it is probably the encoder.