In case anyone else runs into this problem, here's the answer:
The Adobe Flash component cannot start playing a video until it gets some important information about the file. This information is normally stored at the END of a typical MP4 file, so the entire thing must be downloaded before it starts playing.
The information can be moved to the beginning of the file. One utility that does this is "qt-faststart", which is part of the source code for "ffmpeg". It doesn't normally come in the binary bundles, but you can easily built it on Linux systems.
Another utility that will fix this is "mp4box", which is also handy for many other MP4 file purposes. This is good for Windows users because it's easy to find a Windows binary build of this program.
To "fix" an MP4 file for streaming, run this command line:
mp4box.exe -isma filename.mp4
This will change the original file, so you might want to make a backup up first!
The Adobe Flash component cannot start playing a video until it gets some important information about the file. This information is normally stored at the END of a typical MP4 file, so the entire thing must be downloaded before it starts playing.
The information can be moved to the beginning of the file. One utility that does this is "qt-faststart", which is part of the source code for "ffmpeg". It doesn't normally come in the binary bundles, but you can easily built it on Linux systems.
Another utility that will fix this is "mp4box", which is also handy for many other MP4 file purposes. This is good for Windows users because it's easy to find a Windows binary build of this program.
To "fix" an MP4 file for streaming, run this command line:
mp4box.exe -isma filename.mp4
This will change the original file, so you might want to make a backup up first!