Ok, as I know this can certainly be daunting for anyone venturing in to web space, here is what I have found to be the best method of compression and subsequent launching to web:
- Do NOT encode to H.264 before going to FLV. Pick one or the other, because there is no need to encode to H.264 before going to FLV. What you are concerned with are bitrate and frame size, and both of these codecs handle compression and resizing in a specific way. So take your source .mov, which I imagine is uncompressed, then:
- If you decide to go with Quicktime/H.264, here are your settings (bearing in mind that your desired output is 432x207):
Name: h264 (432x207, 24fps, 44.1, 96kps, 1500stream)
Audio Encoder
AAC, Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz, VARIABLE BIT RATE @ 128 kb OR LOWER
Format: QT
Width: 432
Height: 207
Pixel aspect ratio: Square
Crop: (L: 0, T: 67, R: 0, B: 67)
Padding: None
Frame rate: 24 <---- YOU DON'T HAVE TO REDUCE THE FRAME RATE (AND SHOULDN'T, IMO, THE TRADE OFF BETWEEN JITTERS AND FILE SIZE IS NOT EQUAL)
Frame Controls: Automatically selected: ON
Codec Type: H.264
Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 75
Min. Spatial quality: 25
Temporal quality: 50
Min. temporal quality: 25
Average data rate: 1.536 (Mbps) <----- HERE IS YOUR PROBLEM. FOR THE FRAME SIZE YOU ARE GOING FOR, YOU DON'T NEED NEARLY THIS MUCH DATA. I WOULD REDUCE TO SOMETHING LIKE 400 kbps. THAT WILL BE MORE THAN ENOUGH. ALTERNATIVELY, YOU CAN JUST SET THE CODEC TO ENCODE AT "MEDIUM" QUALITY, IF YOU ARE DOWNCONVERTING YOUR SOURCE MOV TO A SMALLER FRAME SIZE.
Fast Start: on <---- COMPRESSED HEADER. FASTEST WAY TO GET A VIEWER TO YOUR VIDEO.
Now, if you decide to go with FLV, just set your encoding to 400 - 500 kbps (video), and 96 - 128 kbps audio. This is more than enough for your frame size. You can check out my website for an example of the former (Quicktime) encoding scheme: www.evanjwarden.com
One last thing. You mention how you lose saturation/gamma when converting to H.264. While this may appear to be the case, it is not. For some strange reason, H.264 degrades when played back in Quicktime. I don't know why, it just does. Try your H.264 in VLC...notice a difference?
There is a way to combat this though. In Compressor, under "Filters" you can modify the Gamma output. I wouldn't suggest going over 1.10. I usually go to this as a default. There is also a tab that says "Color". You want to change that to "Preserve Source". Those two tricks combined should help you greatly with color representation.
It's really a matter of taste. Once you see the results, you can tweak the settings 100kbps or more in either direction to achieve what you are going for. This method seems to strike a good balance between quality and file size.