Now, post flight processing is a TOTALLY new ball game.. You cannot expect the quality of the camera to be fully exploited by a freebee or a two bob software. If you are PC based then Adobe Premier is the industry standard, Mac based its Finalcut.
Looking at your stuff on the TV is always better than a computer screen coz thats the way the cameras are designed, for the punter to play his family sunday afternoon tea footage back as they are eating the cakes! Even when edited in Final Cut my stuff always looks better on the TV or a projector. Unless you have a full BBC editing suite always check it out on the TV! Some computers if they are older PCstuff just cannot handle the refresh rates required to see just how good the footage is....
Ahh shut up dave!
I am sure that will open the flood gates for criticism but thats the fact of the matter.
I've pretty much come to the same conclusions, the inexpensive software I currently have makes low quality formats look better but higher quality formats look worse, you get what you pay for! The only exception is my purpose built desktop computer with the high end GeForce graphics card and 22 inch flat screen monitor, almost everything looks good on that! The true test is to copy it over to this laptop and then watch, if it looks good here it's acceptable, if not it goes in the bit bucket.
I have to say I'm not a huge fan of Adobe software so I don't know what direction I'm going to take at the moment. My ultimate goal is the same as DennyR, to not need to post process or at least keep it to the bare minimum, and thus my quest for ridding the recordings of vibration and the ultimate in smooth camera mounts, though I'm beginning to think 99% of everything available for hobby use is below the capability of what I'm after. I guess that means it's time to clear off the workbench in the garage, stock up on materials, and get to work on the machine tools. If no one sells what you want, make it yourself!
Ken