flash (macromedia): Hi there Flash guru's :)

I'm a starting film/tv-maker and a lot of my friend can do beautiful things in
Flash and I'd seriously like to use their animation skills in my video
productions without telling them to learn programs that are aimed specificly at
video and film.

So what is the best way to use Flash in a professional video production
environment ?
Let them export a SWF and hope that my video editing program imports it right
isn't the way I want go.
I want to animator to export it, so he can check it himself and correct errors
if needed.

Are there tools to convert SWF to say, Video for Windows (.AVI) or QuickTime
(.MOV)?
I saw the option to export directly from Flash, is that working ok ?
What about actionscripted 3D models and stuff, does that export alright ?
:frown;

And one other thing, can I export some sort of Alpha channel or matte with
Flash ?
So I can mix it with my video without keying on a color ? ;)

Within flash can export to avi, or mov. The only draw back it that the
animation has to be on the main timeline. I have used this many times
for video. works wonderfully.