[Jansar]

I have tons of movies on my computer in DV Stream, which takes up a crapload of space. Right now, I'm out of space.

I have Cleaner 6, and I was wondering if anyone here with experience recommends a compression method. I once used the default MPEG-1 compression, and it worked well, but I know there's something better, since 400+MB for a 40 minute file is still big (and the quality reduced quite a bit too).

[Uncle Skeleton]

comparing video quality in lossy codecs is inhernetly subjective, so you'll have to make your own decision. Most people agree that 3ivx and DivX are the best. Some people swear by VP3 (or VP4 or whatever it's called now), and a few maintain that Apple's MPEG-4 codec can sometimes compete if you know how to use it right.

whatever you use, make sure to deinterlace. Cleaner's deinterlacer is the best there is, so there's no reason not to, and if you don't it will totally ruin your video and compression quality

[memento]

good answer. It depends a lot on trial and error. For me, Apple's MPEG4 is the best, but I have to use Cleaner to encode because I like to use a higher bitrate than QT export allows. I've found that a spatial quality of 58 is great. There are a few other things I do depending on the source (like adaptive noise reduction, etc)