QuickTime is a very flexible format that supports a ton of compression options, so it is definitely possible to figure out settings that will work.
Choppiness in video, however, can be caused by any number of factors, including (1) humongous file sizes overwhelming the speed of your hard disk, (2) high-resolution video overwhelming the the processing power of your video card or (3) advanced compression algorithms overwhelming the processing power of your CPU. In order to figure out the cause, we’d need to know (a) what the resolution of your video is and (b) what computer you are using to view the video when it’s choppy. For example, 1080p HD video on a blueberry iMac from 1999 is guaranteed to be a choppy slide-show presentation, if it’ll even play at all!
That said, I can give you two best-guess recommendations for video that will play on most modernish machines. Try QuickTime (*.MOV), 640×480 resolution (for SD) and use the Sorenson Video 3 format. Set the Data rate to Basic and the default 1,400 Kbps should be fine. Not gorgeous, but fine. Another, better option is to render out to MP4. I’d use the MainConcept AVC and, once again, set the data rate to ~1,500 Kbps. This is going to look better, but is also a bit more computationally intensive and may be choppy on older machines.
If the Sorenson 3 QT MOV file is also choppy because it’s an even older machine, post back here and I’ll wrack my brain and try to think of something else…
__________
“You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies –
all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.”
– Steve Martin
https://videopia.org