I seem to have found a solution. The video converter native to PPT2010 ain't getting it done. I thought that was the reason to use ms products together- because they're designed to work together. Silly me!

Moyea has a PPT to DVD converter. The trial worked great! Resolution was much crisper than the ppt2010 to video quality. So far it's worth 100 bucks to skip the hours of aggravation.

This isn't the first PPT converter I've tried, BTW. There have been at least 6 others. So far it's working great.

Thumbs down to MS for having such a lame video converter.