Maybe it's time to switch to a decent editor
Kinda what is being implied here :P
To keep the best possible quality, you will want to export it to H.264 (or AVCHD) straight from Pinnacle (but Pinnacle won't have that option) ... so welcome to the dilema ...
As pointed out, options are persist with Pinnacle and lose quality on your source, or switch to something better that will retain the quality of the source via H.264 or AVCHD export ...
Tek