The following is my recommendation for my clients (as of Friday May 23rd 2008).

This is not intended to be a general primer on how to compress video. It is simply my current advice for my clients based on their needs.

1. Go to ON2.com and buy Flix Pro for 250 dollars. (Or you can buy a plugin version for Final Cut.)

2. In the video you intend to upload... Make sure your final edited video has no black lines at top or bottom or sides and no other weirdness on the edges. (You know... the stuff you never see on a normal TV.) Push in if necessary. Make sure the sound in your final edited video is loud (good levels and adequate compression). Make sure the contrast is full range. Especially get rid of any jitter (with a plugin if necessary). In other words, do all the things an "online" editor would normally do.

3. If you're NOT using the plugin version of Flix Pro, save as a mov file of standard DV quality (no real point in going higher).

4. Open Flix Pro. Select the video you want to compress. Select compression = 512K Broadband High Video Vp6E FLV.

5. Then click the audio tab and switch to mono (unless there is something really amazing about the stereo in your source file).

6. Then click the video tab and change the width to 450 pixels. (The height should adjust automatically.)

7. Then within the video tab window set the Rate Control Mode to CBR (Streaming Playback). (Actually... this is kind of optional. It makes the video look a tiny bit worse but will help some site visitors avoid "stuttering" video.)

8. Then within the video tab window click "Video Filters" and a new window will open. Set filter options to Deinterlace, Noise Reduce to 3, Brightness to 3, Contrast to 3. (Within this window you can look at your video as it will look when compressed and you can adjust the settings but the settings above will improve most material.)

9. If you want to add a watermark/bug follow this step. If not skip to step 9. First prepare a PNG file with transparency with your logo/bug in the lower left corner. (Why there? Because so many services add bugs on the right. But lower right is possible too.) Make the PNG file the exact dimensions of the OUTPUT Flash Video file (450 wide by the height of your particular video). Save the file as 32 bit with transparency. Then, in Flix Pro in the top menu bar under view select "Overlay." On the screen that pops up check enable overlay image and browse for the transparent PNG image you have created. (You can ignore any checkbox related to transparency colors because you are using a PNG with transparency.) Once you have made the above settings click "close" to close the Overlay window.

10. Then click the File tab and click "Encode."

11. Now wait for a really long time for the software to create a nice sharp Flash video file with an amazingly small file size. (I'm hoping someone will come up with a good hardware accelerator for this compression type but I'm not holding my breath.)

12. Use the Flash Playback application that comes with Flix Pro to preview your video. If it looks good and sounds good... it's good. If not... do it again (and adjust your Video Filter settings).

13. Before you upload your final .flv file make sure the filename is all lower case with no spaces or odd characters. And make sure you have noted the dimensions in pixels of the video (because you may need to input these somewhere later).

When I start any project I usually cull a minute or so of sample video and compress it a few times with slightly different settings. Then when I get those settings the way I like them I tend to use them for the whole project. (The only weirdness about Flash video is that if you compress it without brightening a bit, then the video appears about 5% darker than the source material. Hence the brightness/contrast settings above.)

By the way, there is other compression software out there but I think for right now, Flix Pro produces the best final product. You can get the same compression in Flix Standard for 40 bucks, but this doesn't give you the Video Filters. (You don't really need these if you pre-process the video in Final Cut. But I find it hard to pre-judge what noise reduction and brightness correction will be needed. So I like the Pro version.)