Reddit reviews Real World Video Compression

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321514696

It's a great starter book and great base understanding of what is going on. If you really want to nerd out, look up white papers on compression/codecs. The math in those is beyond me and honestly, not needed. Compression is not a one size fits all type of thing. Best practice is to do a 10s or so clip to see what happens before you export a longer clip. H.264 has made it easier cause it is a beautiful codec, but people ask for all kinds of dumb shit sometimes. Extremely fast motions are always going to be the hardest to get right. Also, the medium matters. Almost everything broadcast needs to be interlaced (they should have taught you about scanlines, if not, you need brush up on how images are created for TV screens) . Anything for a computer screen needs to be deinterlaced. If you tv source is progressive, then that is deinterlaced too. If all else fails, deliver same as source and make them figure it out. It is always best to start with the best quality you can, compressing up is always going to be a quality lose, so you want to compress down as much as you can. (I'm on the network side, so it is always my problem to fix). If you are making a DVD from an HD source, DVD is still SD, so letterbox that shit. (Boo to anamorphic)

Sorry for rambling, these are just the most common mistakes I run into all the time.

I read this years ago and found it helpful: http://www.amazon.com/Real-World-Video-Compression-Beach/dp/0321514696