Simon, I have several points.
* For a (very) in-depth discussion of the merits of various codecs for distributing video via the web, look for the "Theora" thread (the really long one) in the WHATWG HTML5 mailing list archive. * Since you're "not a fanboy of Adobe's proprietary products, pricing policy, etc", I wonder why AVI is acceptable to you. It's not an Adobe standard, but Microsoft's approach to licensing and pricing is certainly closer to Adobe's than, say, Debian's. * I was planning to say, "Your three requirements (1. distribute over www, 2. FLOSS-friendly, 3. highly cross-platform compatible) cannot be met." But then I realised that actually they can. I'd suggest doing what Wikipedia does: transcode your video to Ogg Theora, and make it playable on your forum by embedding a Java applet Theora player. This meets all three requirements. Regards, Sam
