[thelist] Video and Mobile Devices

[Bob Meetin]

I have a client who wants to  display videos scattered across the site and also on a mobile-friendly versions of the website.  In working on the mobile-friendly version I find that the flash .flv videos don't display on my iPod. You get the video skin but when you click to start the video you get the message,

"Download Failed. Safari cannot download this file".

I  started looking into this error and it seems that iOS does not support flash, but h264 codec and .mov/.mp4. So, a few questions:

1) Can a flash video be converted/reconverted to .mov/.mp4?

2) I don't have any GUI (windows or Linux) for conversion.  Anyone here familiar enough with either command-line linux mencoder or ffmpeg to provide the right options/arguments?

3) If this goes back to my client to create/convert the videos, what program would you recommend?

4) In created the template I do have the ability to set up device specific versions (iPod, android and a few others). What do major businesses do with a problem like this?  Are they creating a device-specific solution and creating different format videos as needed?

5) To make the solution 'reasonably' universal howmany other formats would need to be generated?

Other???

Thx, Bob