Update #3: Subtitle: “How can I make FLV with freeware / opensource software” or “How can I make FLV for free!”
For creating FLV I use Macromedia Flash 8 Video Encoder. I use it professionally (it’s part of Flash 8 Professional) but I understand that not everybody is able to get hold of this program.
How can we create FLV without an expensive program?
You can use Riva FLV Encoder. This freeware program can be use to encode AVI, MPEG, Quicktime and WMV to FLV.
The same company also has a free Riva FLV Player which yoube used to play your FLV files.
Update #4: A program similar to Riva FLV Encoder is FLV Encoder from Digitalgroover.
It’s easy to use but for some reason I can’t get it to work with my computer at home (“Fail to transcode file!”), it works fine with the computer at work.
It’s freeware and they also have a FLV Player which is able to view and repair MetaData.
You can also use the FLV Player by Martijn de Visser for playing FLV.
Both FLV players come with their own installer so you can associate FLV files with one of these programs.
Update #2: VLC media player can also play FLV (and many more) but it seems to be an undocumented feature. And for some reason it doesn’t play all FLV files.
And of course you should use my FLV player for playing video on your site.