Yes, do what David says, though making it a self contained QT out of FCP isn’t totally necessary if you never need to go back to that source file. Reference movies do serve their purpose. I have stuff that I know for sure I won’t need again, and in that case I go with the reference movie.
By the way Carl, there is an option in DSP to set the encoding procedure to “background encoding”, in which it will encode your files while you build your menus, set up the DVD, etc, then, by the time you are done usually you are ready to go, but it’s a moot point anyway as that’s not the best workflow as discussed above.
Joey