Quicktime Movie compression question

This is a G5 using 10.5.8 and Final Cut Pro 5.1.4.
I'd like to submit a how-to video to a contest, and the maximum allowable size is 500 MB. My movie is presently three times that size. Is there any way I can compress a QT movie to a smaller size without too much loss of quality, or do I have to just keep editing and chopping away at the video until I get it down to one-third the length it is now? I'm afraid I'll lose too much how-to information if I do that.
I exported the 7 min. 26 sec. video as a QuickTime movie to see what size file it was, and it came out 1.58 Gigabytes.
Under Export, I see that there are also options to export to Compressor or Using QT Conversion. Can anyone tell me how, or where to find out how, to export this video at its present length, but as a smaller file, without losing too much quality? The contest will accept a variety of video formats, but when I converted the project to AVI or MP4 (Using QT Player) the quality got really bad, with a lot of artifacts, halos, etc.
Any advice appreciated.
Tom

Thanks Ben--it looks like it will take care of things. I note that this method shrinks down the QT viewing window and cuts down on the number of frames per second, but the quality isn't reduced too much. By doing that I will be able to send them the full 7.5 minutes of my video, reduced to a file size of about 450 MB, down from 1.58 GB.
This how-to contest asks you to send them your video over the Internet, but I don't know whether they're viewing and judging the videos on a computer or not. If they're not, then they're going to be viewing mine in a pretty small window on whatever monitor or TV they use, but it still beats chopping the video down to practically nothing so that I could send it to them in full quality.
Thanks much for taking the time to help me out.
Best wishes,
Tom

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