Blurry footage on timeline

[IamXCVIII]

When I add my footage to the timeline and have no video preview playing the still image is quite blurred. Now when I start playing the video it smoothes out and the quality looks good again. Rendering fixes this so the quality is always high, even when paused. 

If I add text to my footage and render the timeline again the text and footage become very blurred and the quality drops a lot. This shows in both the video preview and final exported file. 

If I go back and add new footage to a project that I worked on before, the new footage I add becomes incredibly blurred when rendered in the timeline. I made sure to check it was recorded with the exact same settings. This blurred footage also shows in the final product. 

Now I could choose not to render the timeline but that makes the video playback incredibly laggy and makes it hard to see what is happening on the screen. 

Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening? 

[Steve Grisetti]

Rendering the timeline should not playback laggy. It's designed to remedy the very blurry issue you're describing.

So something is going on that will need some troubleshooting.

Meantime, have you tried right-clicking on the Monitor panel and setting the quality to highest?

[Bill Sprague]

What are your project settings and how did you make them?  Have you picked "interlaced"?