Need advice on embedding videos...

[Cleo]

I embed H.264 vids using JW Player in the paysites that I manage instead of turning the movies into flv vids for a few reason. JW Player can use a bunch of different types of images as the cover image and a bunch of different types of movies files as the movie source.

Reason one is it is easier since I can change out the movie just by taking a screen shot of the new vid and naming it cover.png and change out the movie without having to re-encode the movie as a flv vid.

The other reason is I make the movies also available for download for use with ipods, iphones, AppleTV, and whatever so I just provide a download link to the same movie file that JW Player is linked to.

You can use htaccess to protect flv, mp4, h.264, and just about anything except wmv files so I never use wmv files.

The designer I hired used Easy FLV for the preview on a paysite tour that she did for me but when it comes time to replace the movie I'll be using JW Player so that in the future I can change out the movie more easily.

Either works just fine and to the surfer they never know the difference.

Now if Adobe and Apple would get their shit together and release Flash the iphone Flash movies would be perfect.

Personally I would stay away from MS Silverlight as not a lot of users have it installed and it isn't even available for anything except Intel Macs and Windows machines.