I'm not sure where else to go. I'm completely clueless about technology and video editing, so bear with me.
I've been making videos of games I play using avi clips recorded by Fraps. I was using WMM, exporting to HD 1440x1080. Quality obviously wasn't great, it sapped the color and sharpness.
I got a trial version of Premiere Pro to make actual HD videos. The online tutorials were a bit complicated so I followed instructions from someone who makes HD videos using Fraps avi clips from the same game with no quality loss. Despite this, my exported videos ended up the same quality I got from WMM.
I'm clearly doing something wrong but I have no idea what it is. The person I spoke to wasn't adept at video editing either but they got it to work in a few steps. I let the program pick the best sequence for the file and tried multiple settings when exporting based off tutorials. The best quality I got came from exporting it as an MP4.
This is a comparison of the original AVI file to exported MP4. You can see the exported one is flatter and duller: