Question: do you know how your Pentax encodes videos?** What container/codec are they?

The videos I've seen cameras create have had some pretty odd encoding, and perhaps it's the process of transcoding one odd format to another (H.264 is still pretty new, after all).

I know it's not optimal, but have you thought about/tried converting the videos to some sort of high-quality common format first (uncompressed AVI or something), then to H.264 afterwards?

**I went back and read your thread again - does your camera actually record .MOV files? That's a new one to me!