So – I did a little research and came across the following settings which appear to produce a decent 640X480 video that streams comfortable and looks halfway decent. I’m using iMovie 8 as my editor and exporter.

• Under the "Share" menu, I chose "Export using QuickTime…"
• Under QuickTime settings I used:
• Size: 640X480
• Codec:H.264
• Frame rate: 29.97 fps
• Data rate restricted to 1,000kbs
• Optimized for streaming
• Best quality compression (multi-pass)
• Fast start with compressed header
• Audio: 16bit Apple lossless
• No filters

Unsurprisingly, Apple has a decent writeup on the subject of QuickTime settings.

Keep in mind my end objective was to simply show rough edits to a client so they’d have an idea of the work I’d done. The final edits, audio tweaking, fine-tuning and cover shots will come later, so we’ll want to spend more energy on finding the optimal settings. For this I’m relying on a local expert.