I post a lot of movies & I often get asked what the best way is to optimize video for the web. Well, I learned by a lot of trial & error, but this usually takes a 7MB movie from my camera down to about 1.5MB (which is a good size for the web). Ideally you want to shoot to get your vids under 3MB max... If your audience is more 56K users then try to shoot down near 1-2MB max. Ok here we go...

Here are the Export Settings that I use in Quicktime Pro for optimizing my digital vids
(from my digital camera which takes photos & videos)

You could of course do optimizing in an expensive program like Adobe After Effects or Final Cut Pro (mac only?) - but the inexpensive & easy way is to use Quicktime Pro - which is only about $30 to buy - http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Once you've opened your movie in Quicktime, you can delete any parts of the video that you want and when you're ready - go to File, Export...

EXPORT SETTINGS:

Movie to Quicktime Movie - then hit OPTIONS

In options - here are the settings I usually use:
(all of these have an effect on file size & I'm sure they could be played around w/ more to compress a bit more)

Video Settings: Sorenson Video (note that using Sorenson Video 3 will create a smaller size, but the user must have the QUicktime 5 plugin)

Color Quality: Medium

FPS: 7 or 7.5 (my dig cam video is shot at 15fps, cutting this in 1/2 saves sooo much space & goes unnoticed in your final vid)

Size: custom or current size - smaller will of course create a smaller file

Filter - often if I take a video that's too dark, I use the brighten contrast filter - you can only use one filter at a time in QTPro

Sound Settings: Qualcomm PUreVoice, 22.05
(test different ones for various compression, this one will produce good sound vs. optimized sound)

Prepare for Internet Streaming: click Fast Start
(this means that as soon as enough of the movie is loaded, it will start playing & load the rest while the first part of the movie is playing. smart huh?)

Then just hit Ok - make sure you've saved it w/ the right name/location & hit Save

EXAMPLES:
See videos index page for a list of my video directories

Let me know if you have any questions or if any smarties out there have additions to the above, I just use this by my own trial & error, so I'm open to tips!!

:) WILLO

To get really technical, see my page on How to Create "Poster Frames"