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Over the years, I’ve taught a number of workshops about how to make easily accessible online video. This typically includes a short tutorial on how to compress videos, which I do using QuickTime. After several years of doing this, I still believe you should cater to the lowest common denominator when possible, meaning when you can shrink your file size by two-thirds, do it. The majority of the world is still running on dial-up.

Here are some notes on how to compress the hell out of your videos without losing quality. Note that I use a Mac, and settings and specific terms may vary on a PC.

- Open video in QuickTime
- Go to File, Export (NOT Export for Web)
- At the bottom, it should say “Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie” and “Use: Most Recent Settings”
– Then you have to go under “Options” or a similarly named button next to it to actually change those “Most Recent Settings,” which are likely set to default and is not typically helpful
- Make sure all three check boxes on “video, sound, prepare for Internet streaming” are checked, but then proceed into each section to change certain settings.

Under Movie Settings, Video:
- Settings – *this is the most important one* – you also have two options.

1. Select compression type H.264 (best quality, takes longest to compress)
- Key frames: automatic
- Encoding: Best quality (multi-pass) – compressor quality bar will then likely be set to high w/out the option to change it – that’s fine
- Data rate – this one is where all the change happens! The lower you set the number, the harder your file will be compressed. I don’t recommend compressing in a data rate below 600. If it’s a small size (320×240) and doesn’t have a lot of movement, you can get away w/ 600-800. For larger and more complex files, (640×480, more movement), keep it around 1000kbits/second.
- Optimized for: download
(I’ve grown to love H.264, but you do have to be patient. Otherwise
there’s option two.)

2. Compression type MPEG-4 Video (takes less time to compress, but uses higher data rate, making the files larger; lots more room to change settings here, but also requires that you know more about what you’re doing)
- Frame rate: Current fps (frames per second)
- Key frames: every 24 frames
- Compressor quality: (this is where you can adjust it yourself, I
usually opt for somewhere from “medium – high”)
- Data range: restrict to (never use automatic): like above, if small file, you can get away w/ 600-800 kbits/second. But because the quality of these files is less, you should usually stay above 1000, even for 320×240 files with little movement. You don’t need to bump it above 3000 though – by then, it’s all the same.

Back under general export settings:
- Filter – don’t touch this one, ever
- Size – usually stays the same, called something like “current;” if you’re compressing a big screen file into a tiny made-for-online video and want to shrink it down, there’s a drop down list of sizes (320×240 is most common) and also a way to choose whether you letterbox the actual moving images for slight size changes. *NEVER* “deinterlace source video.”

Under Sound: AAC, 32 kHz, Mono channels, Bit rate 32 kbps (likely your default)

Prepare for Internet streaming: Pick “fast start” from the drop-down menu

- Save as a different file name for now and hit Export! You can always try a few different ways of exporting to toy w/ it and see how things show up. If you use MPEG-4, you may get some of those black pixel squares if you set the data rate too low, which is why I started
avoiding it.