I looked at the 31meg wmv footage, with the car and the guitar, and it smacks of over sharpening. Hard edges have 'ringing' and the fine details in the ground have a definite video sharpening look that reminds me of the JVC HD1 .
Are there controls in the Panasonic to turn down (off) this ?
-Les

i just don't see how one can make a "call" on noise, over sharp, hard edges etc based on any WMV file ...

WMV compression can reduce or change noise, absolutely. The sharpening and edge effects ( ringing) around high contrast transitions are not wmv typical artifacts. Since that video clip was at around 8 megabits data rate, I'd say that with confidence. Perhaps some raw stills from the camera can confirm.
Look at the tuning keys of the guitar, see the black lines around the details? Also his fingers have a thin black halo.


Are there settings for the video edge enhancements ?
It makes the footage look less passable as film footage. We can always sharpen later, but we can't remove the edge enhancements.



i just don't see how one can make a "call" on noise, over sharp, hard edges etc based on any WMV file ...

Someone in dvxinfo where the footage was posted asked the same question, and somewhere in that huge thread either Barry or Jared answered that the camera was used with the default sharpening setting which probably would look a bit sharp.

Looking at that same footage now on my 24".

I blew the guitar headstock up to 200% just to see what your talking about.

I see some natural shadowing on one side of the guitar tuning keys, but the rest looks clean. No edge enhancement, halo that I can see. Looks good.

Steve

The light is coming from above, and the strings near the tuning keys have a black line on top *and* bottom.
I'm glad the cameraq has some adjustments for this, I look forwards to seeing it with the sharpening turned as low as possible.

Looking at that same footage now on my 24".

I blew the guitar headstock up to 200% just to see what your talking about.

I see some natural shadowing on one side of the guitar tuning keys, but the rest looks clean. No edge enhancement, halo that I can see. Looks good.

Steve

You can definitely turn the sharpening WAY down. We had it at either 0 or -3, don't remember exactly which. The scale goes from -7 to +7. So yes, there's plenty of adjustment to turn it way down or off.