Should I string 5 sequences or 1,000 clips?

Latest FCP, MacPro. Project is DVCPROHD 720 23.98 feature doc, 70 minutes.

The feature is edited in 5 sequential timelines, all now fully rendered and ready to go. The next step is to get the complete movie onto a single timeline to export as a self-contained movie. That's the end product. From there it gets conversions for a festival showing (they want an h.264) and for encoding to a DVD.

So to assemble the master timeline should I:
a) string all the contents of each timeline onto a single timeline
b) render each timeline to same settings QTs and string those onto a single timeline

I've done both in the past without hitches, but it occurs to me there may actually be a quality difference adding a same settings render (b). There may be... but is there?