Hello Dan, welcome!
I'm not very familiar with Final Cut Pro, especially the newer version, but I have seen a little info on the Flix Exporter. It’s from On2, the same company that produces (probably) the best codec for Flash.
http://www.on2.com/index.php?316
You may want to clarify whether you will mainly be creating .swf files or mainly .flv files. The main use for .swf files is to create an interactive interface for the user (such as a video player) and is generally not used as a video file format. That is where the .flv files come in.
So for example, an html page would contain a .swf file which serves as an interface and plays a video in the .flv file format. You can create videos as .swf but that is generally not done. If your main goal is just to create the video and then use a Flash player to play the video, you could do all the editing in Final Cut Pro and then use a transcoder to change the QuickTime (or whatever) format into the .flv format. It would not have to be done just by Flix Exporter. I believe Flix Exporter is used as a plug-in just to make the work flow easier.
The length of a movie really does not affect the method of embedding a player on a Web page. A 10 second movie could be played in the same player as a 2 hour movie.
Here is an example of a Flash player (the .swf) placed on a page in order to play .flv video files.
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="370" height="400" id="new_hc_player4" align="middle">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="movie" value="new_hc_player4.swf" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />
<embed src="new_hc_player4.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="370" height="400" name="new_hc_player4" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object>
The interface (the .swf) is 12kb while the actual video (called vid_clip_3.flv) is 17MB and is called by the ActionScript placed inside the player.
Here is an example of a .swf player which uses ActionScript and an xml playlist to bring in and play the .flv videos.
http://www.lynnjohnson.citradingcards.com/pcc/pcc_video_player.html
Again, the interface you see (.swf) is a rather small file compared to the actual video (.flv).
Perhaps you can tell that I really enjoy working with Flash. So if you have to spend much money on a plug-in, you may want to get the real deal and create Flash in Flash.
My second comment is on the “streaming on line”. Technically, actual streaming video is much different from allowing users to download and view video files. The costs can be 20 plus times as expensive as using “Progressive Downloading” to download and view video files. The only issue with long movies is to make sure that your host provides you with lots of bandwidth. Lets just say that you have a 2 hr movie that is exported from Final Cut Pro at 300kbps (called the bitrate). If that was viewed by 100 people, you would use up about 25GB of bandwidth. So look at the number of movies, the bitrate used, and the expected number of viewers per month.
Well… you can always toss us more questions and we’ll try our best to answer.
Eye for Video
www.cidigitalmedia.com