Ok, I know the T2I is generally the best for video in this series but is anyone familiar with this camera?

I'm planning a trip to New York City some time this summer and want to capture video. I shot some things around my house and didnt seem to be wowed by the video quality.

How do I go about getting the best quality settings out of the video other than the lens choice?

Unfortunately you don't have manual video control on the T1i. I haven't used one so don't know exactly what settings you can and can't change but the T1i's video feature is severly crippled. Lack of control options mean that lens selection (using an adaptor and lenses with an aperture ring) is about the only way to control the image.

Also, the Full HD mode is only 20fps, so you may be better off to shoot in the 720p mode.

When I had a T1i I shot only in 1280x720, all testing I did in 1920x1080 was unsatisfactory due to the "stuttery" 20fps. In addition I used a Nikon to EOS mount adapter and a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AI S Nikkor lens for some video. When using Canon lenses I used the "twist and unlock" method for manual aperture control.

See my video tutorial on this method here (read the description first for one correction to the method shown):

Shallow DOF on T1i with Canon EF/EF-S lenses on Vimeo

While there you can see the other video on using Nikkor lenses with the T1i.

Ive seen some amazing looking HD video on Youtube from this camera. I was just wondering how they went about it.