1.) De-interlace your video: Most video files are interlaced, which means that half of one image is blended with half of the next. On a Television this produces smoother motion, on a computer it produces junk.
2.) Lower your audio standards: Most users are listening to computer audio on tiny speakers. Cutting your sample rate to 22 or 11 kHz and the sample size to 8-bit will often produce unnoticeable audio changes but huge space saving.
3.) Shrink the window: While you don’t need to make video postage stamps sized. But reducing the window to half size creates a file that is 25% the file size of the original. That’s a BIG savings in space.
4.) Reshape the video: Most likely you are working with a video file that is sized 720 X 480 (or 486) pixels. You need to resize this to 640 X 480 for it to properly display on the computer monitor.
5.) Restore the washed-out picture: Video signals operate between an RGB value of 16 thru 235. Computers use an RGB value of 0 thru 255. You will need to restore the back and white point of your image. Many applications have this option.
6.) Improve the saturation: A video file displayed on a computer will also need the saturation turned up a bit. This is to compensate for what I call the Wal-Mart effect. Consumer TVs have their reds over-cranked to make skin tones appear richer on their cheap tubes.
7.) Frame Rate: Your video file is likely recorded at approximately 30 fps. This is needed for a television display, but not important for most web video. Reducing your frame rate to 15 or even 10 fps will result in a 50 – 66% savings in file size.
8.) Codecs: The file architecture you pick will often have its own codec chosen. However some file formats support a variety of codecs. Be sure to keep compatibility and audience requirements in mind. Newer codecs offer a significant advantage over older formats.
9.) Don’t use a Conduit: For faster compression, don’t run web compression through a conduit like Final Cut Pro to your compression utility. Instead, save a flattened, self-contained movie and then compress.
10.) Test it: Before you compress a lot of video, create a small test file. Try compressing 10 seconds of video with different settings. Find the ones that work best for you.