Poor photo quality when exporting iPhoto slideshow

Does anyone know which setting produces the best quality for an mp4 when creating a DVD using iDVD? I put a slideshow together using iPhoto because I wanted to use the iPhoto scrapbook theme. I exported the iPhoto slideshow using the highest quality (standard display setting) which produces an mp4 1422 x 800 (H.264, 30 fps, 7 Mbps, ~907 MB).
The iDVD project settings are:
1) Best Performance
2) High Quality
3) Professional Quality
What doesn't make sense to me is that #1 claims to produce a total ~1GB DVD with a 995 MB movie and shows the Quality level as green.
When selecting #2, the claim is a total ~643 DVD with a 575 MB movie with Quality in the red.
When choosing #3, the numbers stay the same as #2 but the Quality goes to yellow.
Why wouldn't the higher quality settings produce a larger DVD with less compression? Which setting really gives the highest quality?
The default is #1 (Best Performance) which clearly produces the lowest quality video when compared to the mp4 export from iPhoto (appeared with a higher quality) and when compared with playing the slideshow directly in iPhoto (appeared with the highest quality).
Would the quality be any higher if I export the iPhoto slideshow using a customized setting? iPhoto custom settings allow the choice of about 10 different compression types from Animation, Apple Intermediate Codec, to DV/DVCPRO - NTSC, to H.264, to MPEG-4 Video, to None (and others not listed here). The frame Rate can also be adjusted from Current (whatever that means), to 8, to 60. The Compressor Quality can be adjusted from Least to Best. Would "None" as the compression type produce the best quality when producing the iDVD?
The ultimate goal is to display the slideshow on the project at my church. The easiest way to do this is to put it on a DVD. But as described above, the quality decrease from iPhoto direct play of the slideshow is noticeable when moving to the .mp4 and extremely noticeable when putting the .mp4 in iDVD and playing the DVD back.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or links to better documentation.

you just cannot export your slideshows in order to burn DVDs, with the same quality
That's an issue with iDVD and the DVD standards. All DVD media is downsized to 640 x 480 or the wide screen 720 x 480. It's the nature of DVDs, not iPhoto. If you use the Ken Burns effect in iPhoto you will need to use the largest 4:3 ratio images possible so the zoom and scan of the KB effect is working on the most number of pixels possible.
I've found that the best final image resolution is obtained by creating the slideshow in iDVD from stills imported from iPhoto at the 4:3 size ratio. The downside to that method is no KB effect and only one transition per slideshow. I play those types of slideshows on a 50" 1020p HD Panasonic plasma TV and the images are quite good. But good is in the eye of the beholder.
See Jim Symon's post in this iDVD topic: Re: High-definition DVDs. Also search his other posts as he was working out a workflow using Photo to Movie to create high def movies and burn them with iDVD. As I recall he found and posted his workflow at one time.

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They work on several levels:
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