[Frameworks] os x workflow for the web

[Eric Theise]

Hello frameworkers,

tl;dr: I want to generate html5-friendly videos from DVD clips that
stay below 50Mb.

I give talks, and use reveal.js (http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/) as my
presentation framework. I occasionally want to include excerpts of
films ripped from DVDs. As reveal.js is an html5 framework, I want to
use the <video> tag to display media. There is conflicting information
out there, but my understanding is that .mp4 and .webm are the formats
best-supported by contemporary browsers. When the presentations feel
complete, I publish them on GitHub. I would like it if anyone could
view the presentations, but it's most important that they work for
either Chrome or Safari on Mac OS X and I am not going to jump through
hoops to make them universally available.

I've used various strategies over the past few years, but do it
infrequently enough that I can't always recollect what I did, and I'd
like help nailing down a workflow that meets my needs.

Most recently, I used Fairmount to copy files and get them into .m4v
format. When I did this a year ago, the results were in .dv format. I
don't recall what I did differently. I use iMovie to edit the clips,
then Share:File, where I have several options to export to .mp4.
Unfortunately, one of the clips I want to use ends up being 58Mb, and
GitHub has a limit of 50Mb.

I have Apple's Compressor which lets me generate .mov files that are
below the limit. But .mov files are not recommended for html5. There
are free and open source tools & services that convert .mov to .mp4,
but this doesn't feel like the right way to go.

What is the right way to go? Ideally I'd like to say: give me an .mp4
or .webm file of the highest quality possible given a 50Mb size limit.

Any suggestions? Thanks for your consideration.

Eric