Re: Compression quality issues

if you disable a clip it should go unrendered when you enable it. May want to test a short section before you go unrendering a lot.

there is also a Render Manager under Tools in FCP.

Personally I think you get like gain over 7.0 so I use that as my max (with ac3 audio) but I know people go as high as 7.5, remember even with CBR rates can spike but not as much as with VBR. Also if you are going to full replication (vs DVD-Rs) you can push the bitrate up without any worries, The 7 ceiling is more for DVD-Rs, but since I want the client to see the end result and have it plan back smoothly I keep the 7 ceiling for replication disc also.