Should I upgrade my graphics card?

Seems like a funny question? These are the specifics.

Have MacPro and Macbook Pro. Generally happy with both as they are.

However, in using Final Cut Studio, everything looks great until I go to render the video to SD format.

Hence, everything look fine and great until I go to render and compress the video output.

Would it make a difference if I upgraded the video graphics card? Have a mid-2009 macpro desktop, so it would be $450 or so to uupgrade and not sure if this would make any difference other than obviously speed-up the graphcis somewhat. The current video is the stock GX120 nvidia card that came with the system. New video is an ATI 5870 I believe.

Any ides?

If you are rendering to SD and playing the thing full screen, no graphics card in the world can make it look good, especially on a screen larger than 15".

Compressing video and audio reduces quality in favor of file size. Is there a reason you are compressing to SD?

Yah, I don't think it's a problem of your video card not being able to display it better, the card just shows whatever you play. And when you render to SD your video naturally looses audio and video quality.

Another option for rendering

I guess I selected SD as I am not very familiar with compressor or dvd studio pro.

Should I be outputting the dvd to something else?

My goal is to output the video I created to create a DVD video that most people can play on their dvd player. Should I be selecting to output to HD but then burn the DVD using different settings in DVD Studio Pro?

ok. The TYPICAL DVD resolution for video is 720x480. The 2nd number is the height of the screen in pixels and denotes the quality, thus 720x480 is SD, 1280x720 is HD720 and so on. If you are trying to watch something that is only 720x480 blown up even to 1280x1024, it is going to look bad. And above that, even worse.

If it were me, Export the full resolution video with the best possible render and then let the DVD Studio Pro do the compression to the correct resolution.

I have done a number of "Share to DVD" from within FCPx and they have been fine, no problems and looked great on the TV.