Nonsensor.

Not as easy a process as it should be, I'll tell you that. To be fair, Flash videos were meant to be streamed on the web. They're a beautiful thing. The internet video revolution was pretty much made possible by Flash video. Other formats are too large (Quicktime) or too crappy (Real), and they all require a mishmash of plugins that always perform differently in different browsers on different platforms. Flash video has saved us from that. But you knew that.

If you're like me, sitting in front of the computer time is working time, and you probably don't do a lot of watching clips unless Gavin links you to something about emo. Maybe you want to watch them on your Windows Mobile Pocket PC.

1. First grab the FLV. There are a billion ways to do this, 3 billion for YouTube. Online tools let you paste the URL and get a download link, Firefox extensions let you right-click and download. You pick it. If it's not from YouTube, it may take a little work, but try Safari. The Activity window generally shows the actual URL of the movie, which you can then just pop into your location bar. Browsers don't know natively what to do with the FLV, so you'll be prompted to download. Voila.
   
2. Here was the tricky part. There are plenty of options out there for converting video, but doing so with the Pocket PC in mind is not any Mac developer's forte, apparently. Coming from a DVD you're golden (thanks to Handbrake), but straight transcoding is the realm of the damned. Fortunately, I found iSquint. It's the free version of a more complete guy called VisualHub. But it does everything you need. Its preset mode (just a quality slider) is built for iPods, but open the Advanced tab and there you go -- everything you need to get good quality, small size, etc.
3. play around with bitrates, etc, but keep these things in mind: the screen on most Pocket PCs will only handle 320 x 240 pixels, and you shouldn't go beyond 15 frames per second speed, especially for underpowered phone devices like an HTC or Motorola Q.

Hope that saves someone the time I spent doing this a while ago.