If you haven’t yet noticed, Flash video (FLV) is the next big thing in video. It’s the format used by Google Video, YouTube, and Blastyx. Forget about Real, Windows Media, and QuickTime; content providers should now be publishing in FLV format. Flash 6, which is required to play Flash videos, is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux and now has over 97% market penetration in North America and Europe — better than any of the “Big Three”.

I get frustrated by sites like NBC.com or ebusiness.byu.edu that publish their videos exclusively in Windows Media format, which often don’t work on my Mac. (And NBC purports to be partnering with Apple on the show The Office but Mac users can’t watch their videos!) There’s no excuse for excluding an entire platform when Flash video now makes it so easy to reach everyone.

I have published movies in FLV and found it very easy. I edited the movies in iMovie, exported them as DV, converted them to FLV with Squeeze, then published them with Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver wraps your FLV files in a SWF player. Google Video and YouTube appear to have written their own custom SWF players, but Dreamweaver comes with a few to choose from.