There are a couple of ways to produce high quality h.264 files for Flash playback in Squeeze. Currently, you can use one of the intelligent Flash 9 .swf presets. This will create two files, a .swf file and a corresponding .f4v file that can be played in the .swf or separately in your default Flash player.

I often get asked how to create a Flash 9 .f4v single file without the .swf file. This is easy to do in Squeeze. Start with a new MPEG 4 preset. You can get this by clicking the + (plus) button at the bottom of the Audiences section. Name the preset whatever you want. Be sure to make it unique so you'll easily be able to find it in the future.

Next, you need to constrain the file type to Flash. Do this by selecting Adobe Flash 9+ under the format constraints pull down. Leave the stream type on Non-Streaming if you will be showing this via progressive download. Now, under the video section choose the Main Concept H.264 codec and choose either a 2 pass VBR or Multi-pass encoding method. This will give you the best quality possible.

For my preset I'll use a nice middle of the road broadband setting so I'll set the video data rate to 768 kbps and the frame size to 640 x 360. Click unconstrained frame rate and a frame rate of 1:1. Because this will be played back online we can change the AVC profile to High. This will give us great default quality, but I always like to bump the b-frames up to 2 or 3.

Now that we have the video sorted out we need to adjust the audio settings. Keep the aac audio, but bump the data rate up to 64 kbps and change the channels to stereo.

Now click okay and your preset is finished. Notice now that it is under your MP4 settings but it has a small Flash icon next to it telling us that we can use it in Flash 9.