In Darren's comment, posted to Prepare to Geek Out , he asked what flash player I was using to play the video in that post. Well, to answer his question requires a whole post (probably deserves more than one!).

Quick Answer
The JW FLV Player which can be found at longtailvideo.com.

Things I like about the JW FLV player:

• You can purchase a license (which I have done) or use the free, non-commercial, creative commons version of the player, which has restrictions.
• You can skin the player to have a particular look and feel.
• You can include plugins that add additional functionality, like the link or embed code at the end of the video, which they call the Viral Plugin.
• You have several monetization options, which really don't apply to me, but others may find of value.
• You have a web-based setup wizard that allows you to configure the code you will place on your site.
• Site implementation is rather straight forward.
• You can embed metadata into your player for each implementation of video on your site.
• If you want to dig deeper into web video compression, embedding, streaming, and the javascript API, they offer some really good tutorials. (Just noticed these!)

Things that tend to go sideways for me about the JW FLV player:

• The web-based setup wizard gets quirky for me by not showing the preview in the setup wizard window when I use a skin. At first I thought the skin was just not working, but it was. The preview in the setup wizard window was all that wasn't working.
• The setup wizard offers two types of code for your blog: javascript based code and an embed code. For some reason, (lack of sleep?) I had the hardest time figuring out how to get from one to the other. It isn't hard at all. I just missed the obvious, I guess.

Another Option
However, my favorite option for a flash player is SlideShowPro. SlideShowPro is unbelievably powerful and so totally slick! It can be vastly more than just a flash player you embed on your site with content. You also have other purchase options and can, for little money, purchase SlideShowPro Director, which is a complete and incredibly powerful content management system for photos and video. But with all of this power, comes a bit of a learning curve.

I've been playing with (learning) SlideShowPro on my personal site for my online photo collection, which contains over 10,000 photos, all managed through Adobe's Lightroom 2 using SlideShowPro's Export plugin to upload the photos into SlideShowPro Director and using SlideShow Pro for Adobe Lightroom and SlideShowPro for Flash to create the actual slideshow itself that then links to the content in SlideShow Pro Director. I've been dabbling with it on and off now (more off than on really) for about a year. I'm just now getting to the point where I think "I get it."

Here's a brief example of my workflow:

• Shoot photos and import them into Lightroom 2 for tagging, touchup, and organization (Or make videos and upload them to SlideShow Pro Director)
• Arrange the photos into collections (albums and galleries) in Lightroom 2
• Export the albums directly out of Lightroom 2 at full size into SlideShowPro Director (You don't have to use full size, but this has its rewards!)
• Create a flash based slideshow in Lightroom 2, using the SlideShowPro for Lightroom plugin, or...
• Create a flash based slideshow in the Flash application itself using SlideShowPro's Flash component
• Embed the flash player on your site.

Using the above workflow, the flash player can be linked to the media RSS feed from any SlideShow Pro Director album or gallery of albums. (I frequently use the exact same flv player over and over again but linked to a different content RSS feed.) As you update the contents in the album or gallery in SlideShowPro's Director, it automatically updates the content that is played in the player! And, with the options I implemented, every time an end user hits my photos in full screen mode, SlideShow Pro Director checks out their screen size and then creates images from the full size images on the server that are the exact size of their monitor--no compression artifacts and no pixilated upsampling. Total sweetness! SlideShow Pro Director is a very, very powerful content management system: smart albums based on EXIF meta data, tags, managing image focal points, etc.

The flash player you create in Lightroom or in the Flash application has numerous customizable features and looks totally professional. In fact, if you know a lot more than I do, you can dig into the bowels of the Flash and Director API and create whatever you can imagine. And, you have the ability to intermix video and photos. The photos can pan and zoom. I could go on and on about this series of products.

Rarely do I actually recommend a product, but I must say that I highly recommend SlideShowPro's entire family of products. They are affordably priced and very powerful. Installing it on my server was very straight forward. (You can also have them host your content for you for a recurring fee.) And they have had excellent support for me when I had questions. I've even had email exchanges with the owner of the company to solve a problem or make some feature requests. These guys really are listening!

But there is an issue... It took me some time, a good bit of time, actually, to get my head around how the SlideShowPro product workflow would unfold for me in a practical application on my personal website with all of my photos. As I didn't use the product consistently and have zero knowledge of Flash, the learning curve felt intense to me. But, let me assure you, for me, it was absolutely worth it! I really think I should have just hit it hard for a few days until "I got it" rather than dabbling a little here and a little there. Now, they have a very nice collection of excellent video tutorials that make understanding the process much more obvious!

Which Option to Choose?
For an occasional video embed, probably the JW FLV player would be the best option. It's less complex and more straight forward. But if you want to deliver instructional content on a regular basis, I would suggest a very close look at the SlideShowPro product line for video and photo content management. I can envision this being used to deliver online staff development in a school district. I think that even as a classroom teacher, I would be all over SlideShowPro.

So, Darren, with the awesomeness you do with your math students, if you're looking for a routine video management system for their math instruction, to upload your classroom interactive whiteboard instructional videos as well as your movies that bring math to life, I'd look seriously at SlideShowPro. Check out their introductory video at this link and imagine that being the digital hub for your math class!