You can max utilization scoring with less than 10% on a card. One way to do this is to combine the two Capital One cards into one Quicksilver for a 11,200 CL. Then just use that as your main card throughout the month, but don't spend more than $1120. Pay the bill in full by the due date.
EX:694 TU:744 EQ:777For me, and number below 10% gives the same FICO score. 1%, 4%, 9% are all the same.
It could be different for your specific profile though, but you would need to test that yourself. What are you planning on applying for?
You can do it any way that you want. If you want to use all of your cards and pay them all to $0 right before the statement and then pay one again after the statement, thats fine too. In fact, you can pay them 3,4,5 times a month if you want. Since you have one card with a high limit though, it might be easier just to use that card and pay it once a month when the bill is due.
It is an interesting question. For the past 5-6 months I played around with my cards, limits and reporting. What I can tell is that the best result for me is let report only 1 card with a balance of less than 9%. For me it did not make a difference if 1%, 4% or 9% was reported. What really surprised me is that when I decided to let Discover report as the only card with a util of 40% my scores still came up to the same level as if I would report 2% on Citi..... But what for sure is a score killer for me is the number of accounts with a balance even if it is 1$ only. Two month ago I let 5 of 8 accounts report small balances 1-10$ just to test the impact and ..bam.. lost 40 points. Util was only 1% but too many accounts with a balance killed my score. So my guess is you report the balance on 1 card up to 9% and select the highest limit card for this. If you have SW try to play around a bit and you will see the impact - amazing and strange results come up at least for me 
(That is what happens when I am bored gardening - testing around with my reportings) This month I am waiting for a big drop as I did let my Freedom report at 66% util and still 4 other cards with smaller balances... wonder what this will do. Overall credit usage is always less than 10% but amounts on single accounts with lower limits were up to 70% when I reported a single card with a balance. So this month 5 cards of out 8 with a balance and 1 even at 66% ..we will see.
You didn't say what you are trying to apply for. How much time do you have? If you have a few months, you should experiment yourself. FICO does not score everyone exactly the same. There are various scoring buckets that alter the way the scoring factors are calculated depending on what is on your credit reports. But here is a log I did last month that documents the effect of gardening and reducing utilization before requesting some CLIs and applying for a new credit card: http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/CLI-log-UPDATE-with-results/td-p/2265707
There's only so much you can do with manipulating statement balances and utilization alone. You have the information about <10% util rule, which is really just a generL rule - you're just going to have to experiment and see what happens with your score. Obviously, as more time passes and you build a longer credit history along with positive payment history, your score will also improve.
For ideal scoring, only let ONE card report a balance of between 1-9% of ITS credit limit, and the others should report $0. Since the one you're an AU on is reporting a balance every month, I would pay all of the others off before the statement dates, if you use them at all.
Starting Score: EQ 583 TU04 619 EX 592 (lender pull) 2010