Hi,
My client provided me with a .flv file to place on their home page as a banner. I have searched the internet for a while but did not come accross to a proper way of doing it. First of all, is it "the" way of doing such banners? or are they supposed to provide me with a .swf instead? If .flv is ok, then how do I embed it (no play controls or anything...) into my html page?
I'd use http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/ which is a highly configurable flash flv player. If you want no controls and set it to auto play, it can be done easily by passing flashvars to it like controlbar=none, autoplay=true, repeat=true to it. just read on it. it is very much well documented. you embed it on your pages like any regular swf since its built with flash.
You will need a flv player (written in flash) you can try JW Player which is open source and used by many sites.
BTW: I would suggest not using the control in auto play as some people browsing the site might come from a mobile connection and playing the movie might cost.
If you have Flash, you can import the FLV into a flash file in a couple ways. One is you can just have a link to it and Flash can spit out a swf that will play the FLV which is still a separate file on the server, or you can choose to embed the video directly in the Flash file so the swf will contain all the video content. If you don't have Flash, one of these other answers might work for you, but a browser won't play an flv directly. If you are creating the web page, dreamweaver can also generate a swf to play the flv for you so you wouldn't even need Flash in that case.