Compressing Video for DVD Burn Makes Text Look jagged

Hello,
I'm currently at the final steps of a lengthy video production project and am struggling to make the text elements of my finished video display correctly after compression prior to burning it to DVD.
I create and produce music for a living and don't have nearly as much experience with video editing. I'm a bit new to all of this and am using FCE 4.0.1 to create my video & Compressor and DVD Studio Pro 2 to compress and author video for DVD.
*My main issue is this:*
I'm using an imported still image as the title card for my film. It's a mixture of large plain Helvetica Neu font text with some additional stylized lettering created in Photoshop (which is why I'm not using FCE's built-in text generators for the title card). The typography isn't very wild and crazy, it's basically big bold letters and a few gentle curves. I exported the image (1200x600) from Photoshop as a .png and imported it into FCE.
When I export my finished video file (.png title card and all) out of FCE, I export it as a raw uncompressed Quicktime file:
Apple Intermediate Codec 1440x1080i
29.97 fps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD (1440x1080) (Anamorphic not checked).
Field Dominance: Upper (Odd).
(It displays in quicktime at 1920x1080 though.)
After initially exporting from FCE, the title card image and all the other text in my movie created from FCE's built-in text generators look fine. It's only after I compress the finished movie in DVD Studio Pro or Compressor that I get jagged looking edges on the curves of my letters, primarily the title card image (the text generated by FCE's generators holds up okay).
In compressor I'm using the "MPEG-2 6.2 Mbps 2-pass settings for DVD" preset and in DVD Studio Pro. Using '2 pass VBR', 'Best' motion tracking, 'best' and 'highest quality' on all the compression settings I can find. I'm encoding at a total rate of 6.5Mb/sec max and 6Mb/sec average. These are standards for compressing to DVD and since I'm preparing a master for reproduction, I've been told I shouldn't increase the data rate over this or I'll run into player compatibility issues down the line.
Any ideas on how I can make this text image last through the compression process and still look clean and crisp without having to increase the data rate of compression? I'm going to play with different file formats for now, but it that doesn't work I don't know where to go from there.
Thank you for any help insights you can provide.

I started with a variety of HD raw footage (most of it gathered on Canon 5D Mkii SLR Digital camera in the form of: H.624 1920x1080) but converted all my raw footage prior to editing into:
Apple Intermediate Codec 1440x1080i
29.97 fps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD (1440x1080) (Anamorphic not checked).
Field Dominance: Upper (Odd).
I edited everything in Final Cut Express 4.0.1 using the AVCHD Apple Intermediate Codec 1440x1080i60 at 29.97 fps sequence preset.
When I finished editing all my video I exported it as a raw uncompressed quicktime file which is also:
Apple Intermediate Codec 1440x1080i
29.97 fps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD (1440x1080) (Anamorphic not checked).
Field Dominance: Upper (Odd).
But when played in quicktime this finished video displays at 1920x1080, which I'm happy with. (I'm assuming this is the proper behavior of Apple Intermediate Codec? It seemed to take 1920x1080 footage, converted it to 1440x1080, and then spit it back out as 1920x1080 after the whole editing process.)
But seeing as how my issue is with an image file I'm creating in Photoshop and importing into my video sequence, I don't quite understand how the rest of my footage would really effect it. I've made sure to create the image using the same dimensions and pixel aspect ratio as my sequence frames by using one of the standard Photoshop screen templates (HD widescreen 1440x1080). I save my title card image as a non-interlaced .png file and import it into FCE.
When I place the imported image on the timeline, FCE doesn't resize it because it matches the frame dimensions of the sequence. When I view the image at 100% in FCE's viewer all of the image's lines, curves, and shapes display properly as they appear in my original photoshop file.
But for some reason FCE treats this imported .png image file as a 'rendered proxy.' So while it looks fine in FCE prior to rendering and exporting, when I export the video sequence containing this newly imported title card image, the resulting uncompressed quicktime file contains jagged horizontal lines across some of the characters in the title card image. It almost looks as if there's some interlacing issue going on.
However after much experimentation and trial and error I landed on a custom compression setting in Compressor that seemed to take care of this issue. I did as you recommended and selected a high quality 7.5 Mbps encoding preset (7.5 Mbps max/6.4 Mbps average), but noticed a 2 pass VBR rendered better results. What really seemed to do the trick was adding a deinterlace filter to the compression preset, and that miraculously seemed to eliminate the jagged lines in my title card image, restoring it to its original appearance (at least during my initial inspection in Compressor's preview mode).
After letting Compressor crank away, I looked at the finished compressed video in quicktime and the jagged interlaced-looking lines in my title card image have returned. Compressor's preview was somehow misguided.
Now my plan is to burn this compressed video to a DVD and view it on a TV to see if maybe these jagged lines in the final compressed version are only being caused by viewing on my computer's monitor. I'm hoping this is the case, otherwise I'm at a loss of what to do next.
If you need any more details please let me know. Otherwise I hope this is enough to give you a better idea of what issues I'm dealing with.
Thanks again for your insights.

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Message was edited by: devongovett
Message was edited by: devongovett

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