Helpful hints?

I have a steraming video on a website that very few people are accessing due to the fact that it is too large (?) and so pulling it up is tedious and not very user friendly. I really need to keep all the footage as it is...
Does anyone have a good suggestion as to how to help make the file more user friendly?
I know that with digital photos for instance if you use JPEG instead of BITMAP it makes the file more manageable.
How about with streaming video?

Thanks ahead of time!