Flash video questions.

The number of movies in Flash format seems to be on the increase.

Are there any advantages over the usual video formats?

To me they have several downsides in that I can't save them which pretty much makes it impractical to download many; I know that they're stored in Windows temporary internet folder, however, despite downloading Flash Player I can't get them to play- when I double click on the files I get the 'which program would you like to use to....' box. Whilst 'Flash' would seem to be the obvious answer it seems to have installed itself in some obscure location that I can't find.

Any tips on this would be most appreciated.

Getting back to the pros and cons, the only positive ones I have heard put forward is that they can be embedded on the web pages, and that the movie can be set to not loop.

To me, given that I'm not on broadband, embedded movies are irrelevant- I download by right clicking and saving on the hard drive.

As for looping, it seems a minor thing and not worth the disadvantages, which are: -

1. The movies cannot be saved, at least not without a great deal of messing around
2. Judging by the download times, there is no saving in file size
3. It seems yet yet another example of letting large coorporations push their unnecessary software products to the extent that everyone is compelled to use them, despite the fact that any benefits are purely ones of style rather than functional improvement, at the cost of a great deal of frustration and exclusion to those who are not as technologically competent as others

This is in no way a criticism of the makers of these videos, for example the 'spherculism' site linked to from this forum. Spherculism is a superb resource with well structured tutorials, the movies are excellent with innovative moves (it's a real shame that I can't actually watch them), it's obvious that a great deal of work has gone into it and, for those with sufficiently advanced computer set ups to get the most out of it, it's probably one of the best poi move resources on the web.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here and it's just me who can't get these things to work, in which case it'd be great if someone can enlighten me.

Or maybe other people are having this problem, in which case some discussion would be good, cos I can see this format being used more and more.

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