Thanks John,
I realized that my export (going directly from FCP to FLV, 1000 bit rate) was looking so lousy because i had not re-sized the FLV viewer. my project’s dimensions are 550×309, and the FLV viewer was not set for the size of the project. once i re-sized the viewer it looked great! thanks for your tips I will use them in the future.
Best,
Tara