Creating a DVD that retains (most) of the quality of the 24p 1080 footage.

Question

Hello all,
I have done extensive forum research prior to posting this and have, for the last two days, unsuccessfully created a DVD. I do wedding videography and I have been venturing out and wanted to try to use FCPX on my wifes mac. So, I imported all the footage from our Canon 5 and 7D cameras. Created/edited the entire movie on FCPX. This is where I am stuck.
I noticed FCPX doesnt have native chapter markers like iMovie.
     The solution I found was to choose Share>Export>Compressor.
          Once in Compressor, I was to set my own chapter markers via that program then Export to Mpeg-2.
               The next step was to use MpegStream to change the aspect ratio to 16:9 in order for iDVD to accept a better aspect ratio.
Here is my problem.
     I get all of the above done, just prior to importing to iDVD.
          Once the video (about 30 minutes long) is converted to 16:9, I lose all sound on the new file. I have beautiful, 1080i video, but no sound. Also, I have no idea how to figure out if the chapter markers are still there.
I am utterly confused and lost. I don't know if I am doing too many steps or too little.
I am a mac noob as all I have previously done was edit on iMovie and just export to iDVD using Best quality and it still came out at 480x540 which is godawful when trying to give a client better quality dvd.
I generally use Adobe CS6 on my PC, however this time I was short on time and did a quick transfer to the Macbook. I tried transfering the files back to the PC after switching them to AVI, had a major loss in quality so...I am stuck using the Macbook and either iMovie or FCPX...
I pray that someone out there that knows their stuff can walk me through what to do in order to get these DVD's done.
Ideally I want to get these mailed out tomorrow, but I don't want to mail out 540p DVD's. I at least want to get these things to 720p if not better.
Please help!
Thank you in advance.
Jason

Answer 1

First all, Karsten is quite knowledgeable about this subject, so I recommend taking any and all advice he offers.
Just to add a few comments that I hope will help.
Stirid wrote:
I noticed FCPX doesnt have native chapter markers like iMovie.
The latest FCP versions do have this.
               The next step was to use MpegStream to change the aspect ratio to 16:9 in order for iDVD to accept a better aspect ratio.
This is an unnecessary step. iDVD does have problems reading SD anamorphic files correctly, but it will get your 1080p aspect ratio (within a 720x480 frame, which is the DVD standard) right if you set up your iDVD project as 16:9.
          Once the video (about 30 minutes long) is converted to 16:9, I lose all sound on the new file. I have beautiful, 1080i video, but no sound. Also, I have no idea how to figure out if the chapter markers are still there.
You lose sound because Compressor outputs separate audio and video files, which need to be muxed.Although this can be done in Streamclip, it's again an unnecessary step. As Karsten said, iDVD just wants the original Quick Time and it does all the encoding.
You'll know if iDVD read the chapter markers if you preview and you see Scene Selection.
Good luck.
Russ