Movies on webpage - what format?

I have to implement a movieplayer on a webpage for a number of clips. What would you do? A flash player ? And if so, are there recommended converter sor player scripts?

Currently I tend to simply throw a movie file to the browser as download, so the user may open it with mplayer or whatever he's default movie player is. Then again a nice embeded player on the page would be nice too.

Other than flash, what codecs would you suggest?

Thanks.

I don't know much about web movies, but if you wanted it compatibale with the most people I'd say flash. I don't really know what's involved with that though. Also if it weren't flash, then I'd go with quicktime, although most people on this board would probably disagree with me because they for some reason hate quicktime.

Personally I prefer them in this order:

flash, microsoft media, quicktime, real

The latter two are least favorite thanks to the junk that accompanies the players.

You could use swftools to convert .avi to .swf
I believe the compression can be compared with .zip, and I thought I saw that the movies on youtube use the same format.
You need an .htm file that can embed the .swf, something like this: http://www.imagematics.com/Resources/Adding_SWF_Files.htm

Thanks, very useful. I guess the swf is streaming ?

Erm .. I was wrong about youtube. The format is FLV.. flash video ..
But now I found this page:
http://www.bytescout.com/swfscout_flash_demo_flash_create_youtube_like_video_player_from_avi.html

And I'm not sure if these types are streaming. On my former website, I put a converted avi as swf on a page, without problems. However, I can't remember if it was streaming.

I'll check that, thanks a lot, meanwhile watch or save this, pretty good as well: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay/

Yeah, player controls would be nice, but the method described on the page you linked to seems to be complicated. Some not so experienced people will upload the movies an even now they go trough a converter odysee, from their camera devices to a useable avi. So a simple and clean solution would be it.

I guess I'll try the satay Container method. Maybe I can add player controls this way too.

That said, the quality of flash movies, relative to their filesize, is bad to say the least. Compared to realmedia or QT.

Flv or swf will do if the quality doesn't matter. Otherwise use Quicktime.