Motion

What version of Motion are you using, 2 or 3?

 

If you have Motion I'll assume you have Final Cut Pro, right?

I would probably export each segment as a video file with a lossless (or just high quality) codec. Or if you're doing this for TV, just use DV settings. Then stitch them all together in Final Cut Pro and export that as a MOV as well. Then if that's too large for you, you can compress it as you like.

 

Yes, you should save it as a .mov. That's only half the answer though, as .mov does not imply a codec i.e., it could be DV, MPEG, Sorenson, Uncompressed etc...

If you are exporting using the DV codec expect roughly 200MB per minute. Uncompressed video will, obviously, be much larger but look much better than DV, especially when it comes to GFX and text. The animation codec may work well for what you're doing as well. If you want high quality, you will have large files. Save the lossy codecs for delivery (mpeg-2 for DVD, else your choice.)