Xacti HD and Final Cut Express -- It used to work great! How do I go back?

I have a Sanyo Xacti HD700. It gives me 1280x720 MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 files, which my Mac just loves. I used to be able to quickly edit the clips together in Final Cut Express, export using complementary QuickTime settings (specifically, those recommended by Vimeo for HD playback), and get beautiful MP4 files, relatively quickly.
Then, one day, a friend needed me to edit a quick video using a DV camcorder. It was confusing as heck getting the footage into FCE, and not particularly elegant getting it out. But, the project was done overnight, I washed my hands of it, and wanted to get back to making beautiful MP4 files again, relatively quickly.
Except I can't! Now, for one, encoding takes hours. Hours! My source videos and export videos are very similar, yet I sit and watch as the estimate for completion actually goes up for an hour before slowly coming back down.
And frankly, that would be fine, except now my exported videos are the wrong size. They include letterboxes, and the video itself is squished, stretched. So I wait four times as long for a ghastly video. The best I could do is use the Quicktime export settings to "crop off" the letterboxing, but there's still some black bars and it's just not the same.
Here's how my videos used to look:
http://vimeo.com/1067235
Here's how an exported video looks now:
http://vimeo.com/1655414?pg=embed&sec=1655414
What happened? Out of the box, everything worked perfectly. Now, tainted with actual tape, Final Cut Express seems like it's running my videos through six extra wringers and giving me clips worse than I'd get just cut-and-paste editing the Xacti files in QuickTime Pro!
I Googled my brains out, and all I've learned is, if I had Final Cut Pro, "Project Settings" would have all the switches I need. Well, I don't have FCP, just FCE.
Somewhere, something was set that I want to unset. Can anyone help? Do I have to delete every trace of FCE and just reinstall?
Mahalo for any advice!

It sounds like you didn't change the settings after you made the DV video. Did you switch it back to 1280x720 and make a new sequence in that format? Check item properties for the sequence you edited. What does it say? Also check item properties for any media you captured since working in DV.

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*The following User Contributed Tips are located in the Pro Applications: Video > Final Cut Express and Final Cut Express HD Forum:*
skalicki` - Working with AVCHD: Log and Transfer FAQs
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2672530
Publish date: December 03, 2010
skalicki` - Final Cut Express: Basic Troubleshooting
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2662419
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*The following related tips are located in other areas of Apple Discussions:*
Please see the User Tips Library

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Sincerely,
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Quick follow up, since I was on my phone earlier and am back to a real keyboard.
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#29: Need AGP Graphics card
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302667
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Xacti HD and Final Cut Express -- It used to work great! How do I go back?

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