Specifications

Specs for supported Flash Video formats: http://osflash.org/flv

HOWTOs

Converting uncompressed AVI to high quality FLV using AviSynth This HOWTO refers to Flash 8.

Flash Players

Most players seem to come in a free version, and a licenced version with additional features.

JWPlayer – Open Source. I really like this one.

FLV Player – Free, good, but no full-screen mode.

FlowPlayer – How I missed this one, I’ll never know. Great range of display formats and features. This is the only player I know that is able to play an MP4/H.264 video and fall back to an FLV file if the Flash Player installed does not support the H.264 format. Flash 9.115 minimum is required to support H.264/MP4 containers, and not everyone has that version.

Other Tools and Converters

Avidemux for Windows provides conversion with a simple-to-use GUI interface. GUI always wins the day when experimenting with this stuff. You can go back to command-line options when converting in batch.

Another tool on the same site, ‘MakeInstantPlayer’ will encode a video into a self-contained Windows executable. That is very handy for presentations and distribution, where the end user is not expected to have their own players installed.

I use Avidemux to create MP4 videos now, using the AAC audio encoder, and the H.264 video encoder, the result plays in any of the above listed Flash players.