Since Flash Video is getting lots of buzz right now, here are a couple of sites that use video in a great way:

JC The Store – lovely use of short video loops that expand to play mini-movies.

Psyop – Simple site with superb video content – check out the Psyop anthem!

I never understood why flash video isn’t a lot more common. It’s true that you can get (slightly) better quality at the same bit-rate using QuickTime or Windows Media Player, but the Flash 7 player and improved sparq codecs have closed that gap. The great advantage of Flash video is seamless integration into a the UI.

Most video on the web could do with the “Grandma” test. Try and get your Granny to play a video on the web. First she gets a pop-up window asking her to select from multiple video playback technologies and bandwidths. On selecting, the video opens up in a separate application that she may or may not have installed.

Compare this to Flash video where the video plays right in the same window, regardless of the users platform. (To make the experience really slick, it’s nice to do a bandwidth test on the client, and serve the appropriate stream accordingly.)