Best video compression

[Rmpl]

How do you export video with a small file size and maintain high quality? For example, a lot of pirated movies are about 1 gig file size, look fantastic and they are about 2 hours long. Does anyone know of a guide or something that takes you through the steps to create this kind of high quality/low file size result? I don't want it for pirating purposes, pirated files are just the best example I know of good quality:file size ratio.

Thanks in advance and I'm sorry if there's already another thread about this. I searched and could not find it.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I use MPEG Streamclip and export as MPEG-4 using the H.264 codec and determine the bit rate (1MB/s is more than enough for 720p footage) and enable "multi-pass".
Or you could use Handbrake and use one of its presets.