HI,

I'm going to be using a fair amount of video on several upcoming site launches. Mostly short (under 10 minute) instructional videos. I've been testing various methods for this on my blog http://jamiedolan.com (most pages have video). I have been using .flv with some kind of flash player (I tried numerous players).

I can get the videos to play and work just fine on the web.

I'm left with 2 problems:

1. No compatibility with mobile devices. I've seen a couple companies that offer a all-in-one solution that say they will make your videos compatible with virtually everything. However, these have been hosted services, and I'd prefer to host my own. I don't mind buying software if that is necessary. I'd even consider the $995 Adobe Media server if that would help solve this problem.

2. There may be a simple technical solution to this. Regardless of the player or the preview image set for my flash videos I am having a problem. When feed burner sends out my feed via e-mail, or if I view my feed via a basic RSS reader, the spots where my videos should be are blank. When I view the videos for YouTubes feed, they have thumbnails show on their feed.

Any suggestions you can offer would be very very much appreciated. I've spent days reading and testing, and and even more confused, particularly in respect to the proper formats / servers to use to stream to all mobile devices. It seems as thought this area is constantly changing with constant updates to mobile products, which makes it that much harder.

I will pay for software, but as mentioned would prefer to manage my own hosting. If that is not realistic, if you have a provider that would host my videos based on my above requirements, please feel free to pass along that information.

Thanks very much,

Jamie Dolan