Thanks risce1 for the quick reply. One more question if you don't mind. One of the reasons I'm looking to purchase the XL1S is because of the frame movie mode. I understand that quick pans (especially with vertical lines, hot and white areas) will cause "jumpy" frames; are there any other situations where jumpy frames because of FMM will occur? I'm planning on shooting Martial Arts training videos and was hoping FMM would resolve the interlace problems you can get with video played back on monitors. Otherwise if my target was TV, I would use the standard mode for filming.

I have no interlace problems at all in regular mode, review my edits on a sony monitor.Martial arts in frame may be a problem, white uniforms, fast motion, flourecent lights, hmm.....Frame mode is a great look but I have found it is not a mode that can handle all situations,,, in your situation I would experiment quite a bit before counting on good frame mode footage.

I usually shoot in Frame/Progressive mode (GL-1), but in this case I would concur with risce1 for a different reason. slow motion.

if you are making martial arts training demos, slow motion would be a key effect to use. when you shoot in Frame mode, you only get 30 samples per second. that doesn't make for good slow motion footage. in Normal mode (Interlaced) you'll get 60 samples per second. even though they are only half-frames, it is much better to have 60 half frames than 30 full frames when you want smooth slow motion.

if you shoot at 60fps interlaced, you can slow the clip to half speed and render perfect slow motion without any interpolated "ghost like" frames. I have done this and it comes out great. I render to 30fps progressive, and I have 30 samples per second of the martial art move, at 50% speed. very handy and very smooth. if you are rendering to 15fps, you can go down to 25% speed, and still have a different picture for every frame of video.

a question for risce1:
I understand that frame mode isn't good for everything, but could you tell me what tweaks it out / causes jumpy footage? is it due to the nature of 30fps, or is it something technical about the way the Canon's CCD works?
thanks...

cheese,, I don't know what causes the jumps, all I know is that frame increases vertical resolution 1.5x. ,and in the xl1 manual a statement (disclaimer) says"Frame video may not appear completely smooth during normal playback"
Even with the limitations the look is great, we just ALWAYS check the monitor before shooting crucial scenes.Thought I knew all about the frame mode and shooting conditions, got burnt big cost us (me) many $$$$$ and learned the lesson,take the monitor on every shoot,no matter how simple it seems.