This is just a question more out of curiosity than anything else. Can any of you techs explain why the same length of video that is a flash file format vs. another format, like WMV for example, is only 1/3 to 1/4 the size in bytes?

I downloaded some flash video files and then, as an exercise, converted them to WMV files and was astonished to see that the new files were almost 4x the size of the originals. I thought maybe the picture quality would be vastly improved or at least the screen size of the video would increase but they were both the same. I ran both videos at the same time for a side by side comparison and there was no difference. What gives?

Also, does anyone know of a free video edititing utility that will join together 2 flash files into one. One reason I converted these files to WMV was to use Win Movie Maker to combine the two...but apparently, to do this, WMM has to re-encode the entire 2 separate videos into a new one and was going to take like 2 hours to do it! Is there a way to just grab the two files and stitch them together, without encoding an entirely new movie from the two parts?

Different encoding algorithms. FLV also works with key frames so some of the content that is not moving doesn't get rendered in every frame. If you look for a very good format that is small and offers great quality check the h264 codecs that will give you mp4 files.

I do not know any software that does loss less stitching of two FLV clips but Premiere Elements for example can work with them and render them in a decent quality after you are done.

Have a look at hxxp://www.afterdawn.com/guides/

Do a search for "free video joiner" on the same site to find a free utility to merge video with.