Peter,
I think Macromedia's Flash product has a lot going for it, particularly in
the "player penetration" stakes. Anything that can make both publishing and
viewing video content on the web can only be a good thing (unless it is more
pr0n).
A good argument, though not a standards-based one!
But compared to how some of the "players" take over your system - Real in
particular - Flash is an affordable compromise and generally cross platform
compatible (Mobile devices will take a few years to catch up I think).
Which is where a standard like MPEG-4 (along with its latest incarnation, the rapidly-being-adopted H.264 -- a more recent revision of MPEG-4 ) with its scaleability all the way from HD down to mobile phones (with 3GPP - on GSM networks - and 3GPP2 - on CDMA networks) has an advantage over Flash.
It is already a doddle to author for 3GPP and 3GPP2 in QuickTime Pro, with a simple export, and as H.264 gets included in the workflow over the next few months the scope of this technology will widen even further.
In this way, standards remain standards, with their own evolutionary path, even as authoring solutions evolve around them, whether proprietary or not. Which is an approach that appeals to me, as someone committed to web standards.
If you can avoid being penned into a solution, particular when authoring
video, there are many solutions that provide the provision of that video on
the web.
Indeed, though some are more standard than others. :)
-Hugh Todd
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