converting animation submission to flash

[Gary Dillard]

OK, pretend for a minute that I have no knowledge of 3dStudio Max, Movie Maker, Quicktime, or Flash other than clicking on a file a letting it run. Actually, you don't have to pretend because it's quite true.

Our animation team put together a dynamite animation that I understand takes about 240 MB (since the requirement is "well under 250"). I would like to store this animation on our website in some format that can be accessed and played in a reasonable length of time, and I'm guessing that a 240 MB quicktime movie doesn't meet that criteria.

Is there a straightforward way to export this into Flash or Real or something that will compress it or stream it and make it usable, or is that really a labor intensive job?