Maintaining quality when exporting to MP4

I'm trying to export my video to MP4, but everything I've tried ends with a drastic loss of quality. Exporting to DV or Sorenson 3 look fine. But exporting to MP4 or H.264 are completely unusable. I've adjusted for higher data rates, more key frames and frame rates...I've selected best quality...I've set it for 640x480 and 320x240...I've tried Compression as well as Conversion and ended with the same results each time. I've also tried to export from Quicktime 7.0 instead of through FCPHD.
I've exported to MP4 with great results before and my software hasn't changed since the last time I exported a project.
Any suggestions? Thank you.
Emac 1.25GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Thank you....
I've tried a couple of different ways:
A.
Select File -> Export -> Quicktime Conversion.
In the Save window, change the format to MPeg-4 and select Options.
In Export Settings, I've changed the File Format to MP4, Video Format to Mpeg-4 Improved and Image Size to 640 x 480 VGA. I've tried different figures for the Data Rate (256, 512, 768) and Frame Rate (29.97, 15, 10).
Last step was to select Save.
B.
In the Save window, leave the format as QuickTime Movie and select Options.
In the Conversion Settings window, I selected MPeg-4 Video (A few other times I tried this using H.264).
I left the Frame Rate at Current but have also tried 29.97.
Key Frames I left at Every 24 frames.
I increased Quality to Best and Data Rate I've tried changing it to Automatic but have also left it on Restrict to 6400 kbits/sec.
The Optimized selection has been always set as Download.
After Selecting Okay, I've tried setting the size as Current, 640x480 and 320x240.
I've always deselected Prepare for Internet Streaming.
After that, I've selected okay and then Save.
Each time the quality of the video has been very bad. Since the source video comes from a DVD and it looks good when I export to DV or Sorenson 3, there has to be something I'm missing.
Janet

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