I just purchased Sorenson Squeeze for Flash. Awsome codec. Check out the video feature on the topbar of the site I manage at www.arboretum.org

The feature is about 463 Kilobytes, and because I put a preloader on the first scene, you hardly notice it loading.

I used Pinnacle to edit, a JVC GRDV800US to shoot.

This is not a paid add, I'm just very impressed.

Windows Media Encoder does an arguably better/equal/worse job but for free. I recommend that everyone try that first consider it's a free download off microsoft's site.

2- I don't get the movie at the top of the arboretum page (the one to the right of the logo). You could've just used an animated GIF or low FPS video as I don't get the point of using video so I can see flowers swaying in the wind.

1. A great percentage of those who have MS browsers have flash installed, whereas any single one of the several media viewers (windows, QuickTime, real etc) are not as common.

2. You can add interactivity to flash, and you can load the captions dynamically from a scripting engine (Cold Fusion, ASP, etc.). You can have a menu on the screen (like a DVD) pointing to the different scenes.

3. Here is probably the most advantageous; Flash plays in "Scenes." This allows the feature to be cut up into chunks.

For example: If you have 2 chunks of video, one is 20K and the other is 2MB the first chunk (2K) keeps playing until the next is loaded. This appears as a seamless start to finish video if you compose it right. Bottom line---- in most cases the viewer has to do nothing to see the video. Animated GIFS don't have this scene function.