I just finished a file on the church mac (which I'm ready to throw out the window), and when it burned to DVD it was not a clean look. It was a bit pixel-y every now and again. I'm not sure if they messed with the export to quicktime settings or what. What's the best DVD quality settings to have it on? I never really checked on mine, as I never messed with those options. It was always just clean.

From FCP the easiest way is to export the file as a Quicktime Movie (uncheck the make movie self contained option) then import directly into iDVD or DVDSP.

the issue you're describing sounds almost like compression artifacts. did they appear on the video before export? if it only happens after burning to DVD - dig this article -

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/compression_chapter_markers_stone.html

very handy info about compression markers.

Hi Alex.

Pete's advice is correct and, if you are using iDVD, compression markers placed in your FCP timeline wherever it is "pixel-y" or areas of high motion should assign more bitrate to those areas for better quality.

If you use DVD Studio Pro (DVD SP), the following advice might also help. But ignore it, if you're strictly using iDVD.

1/ In your FCP timeline, choose "Export" using "Compressor".
2/ In the "Batch" pane of Compressor, click the "Setting" button and select (if your movie is 90 minutes or less) "DVD: Best Quality 90 minutes" (and either 4:3 or 16:9, depending on your FCP timeline). Select both the "MPEG 2 6.2Mbps 2-pass" and the "Dolby 2.0" options.
3/ In the Batch Pane, under "Output Filename" give the .m2v file and the .ac3 file the exact same name (e.g. change them to "Video.m2v" and "Video.ac3").
4/ In the Inspector pane, click the "Quality" tab to make it active.
5/ For any movie under an hour, I set the max. bitrate to 8.9 and the average bitrate to 7.6. I think the max bitrate the DVD spec will allow is about 10, so this way you are still leaving 1.1 Mbps for the menu structure and so forth. Unless your menu structure is very extensive, or you are using AIFF (very large sound files) instead of Dolby .ac3 files (where you might then have to lower the max. bitrate), this should work well.
6/ You can also try changing your GOP structure to further increase your quality. Click the GOP tab in the Inspector pane. With "DVD Best Quality 90 minutes 16:9" settings you will get an IBBP structure. The more I frames you have, the better the quality (but the trade-off is larger file sizes). So selecting IP as the GOP structure and also shortening your GOP size down to 6 should maximize your I frames and therefore your quality.
7/ Submit your batch and you can then drag the resultant .m2v and .ac3 files directly into DVD SP. They are already encoded, so your work in DVD SP will be much quicker!