Trying to understand different file sizes based on publishing options

Hi,
I have a project that when published was coming out with the .swf at about 15.9MB.  This is in Captivate 7.0.1.237 with the following settings (defaults I believe):
Compress Full motion  recording swf file - unchecked
Retain Slide Quality Settings - checked
Jpeg: 80%
Advanced Project Compression - checked
Compress SWF file: checked
It seemed strange that all the things in my library came out to about 5 MB and previous projects (with fewer images, fewer slides and less than 1 MB of things in the library) had come out at only 1-2MB.  Such a big jump in .swf size didn't seem to make sense, especially if I wasn't adding that much in new assets.  All of these projects have a lot of video, but those are external. 
So I tried unchecking Retain Slide Quality and set the Bmp to 8-bit.  5.7 MB output which seemed to make sense for what the project is, but yuck - aliased images and some weird color fringing on single line edges.  Then I tried High(24 bit) and my project is still only 5.7 MB, so I guess there are very few things in my project that it was actually adjusting down (probably only .png files, not the pictures which are .jpg).  I see that previously my individual slides are set to Optimize, which I would expect would have been giving me a smaller sized project all along when it was using Retain Slide Quality Settings. Hmmm...
Then I tried unchecking Advanced Project Compression to see if it would give me a bigger size... nope, still at 5.7 MB.  It would seem that leaving this unchecked would be a good thing, if it doesn't do anything.  Any reason to check this if it isn't reducing file size?
What are best practices here?  It seems to me that unchecking Retain Slide Quality Settings, unchecking Advanced Project Compression and putting the Bmp to High (24 bit) is the best option for my project.  But why isn't optimized more optimized?  And what am I loosing in those 10 MB of .swf?  Am I loosing quality or stability somewhere that I haven't noticed yet?
Thanks for any insight.  I'm still scratching my head.

Advanced Project Compression tries to optimise the compression settings on a slide-by-slide basis for better overall file size reduction.  It's usually NOT a problem.  However, in some cases we advise developers to turn it off as it is often responsible for 'artifacts' such as 'ghost lines' appearing on slides.
I usually find that using High 24bit compression actually gives lower file sizes than using the Optimized setting.  Go figure...

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