downloadable videos

Hi –
I am building a wordpress site that I can send people to to download videos.
I have set up my Amazon S3 account, have the Firefox S3 addon and the wordpress Amazon S# plugin – all set to go!

These vids are 20 minutes to 1/2 hour long. I uploaded one to my S# bucket and noticed it took rather a long time.

1) would it be better to upload a zip file so that people can download it that way? Is it possible (it must be) and do I need to do anything special?

2) Recommended free software to ‘zip’ a video?

3) once it is uploaded I am guessing I just post my link text and make a ‘link’ using the URL of the uploaded file – is this correct?

Thank you!