Exporting the best quality for web DL

[gwyn]

Hey everyone -- I've made a vid for Escapade using HD source for the first time. I finally got my files to work for the size needed for the show, but now I'm trying to get a decent quality file that's not too huge for posting to the web -- both for download at my site, and for uploading to streaming. Nothing I make seems to come out well.

I exported using the H.264 codec (or whatever the number is, I don't have it open right now), and got a fairly shiny file at the Avengers aspect ratio of 965x542. But if I try to make it into any kind of .avi, it becomes massively pixelated and other files types seem really blurry -- not what I want after using all that HD source.

What are people using these days for DL and streaming? I think my methods are woefully out of date. And how did you get there?

For what it's worth, I'm on a Mac using an older version of FCP (6), and use MPEG Streamclip to make a lot of my web files.