I constantly hear from people, “our flv file size can’t exceed x MB,” as if the file size affects anything. It’s all about the data rate as Josh says. The question to be asked is what data rate can most of the audience play. If everyone has cable modems, a higher data rate is fine. If they’re on a corporate network where they don’t want to crash the network and so spec a 200kbps data rate you have to work with that. With low data rates a trick you can use is to encode your video at 12 or 15fps rather than 24 or 30. That way the encoder can apply twice the data for each frame, thereby, improving the look. Except for very fast-moving footage this approach is a good compromise.
John
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