Thanks for your suggestions Carolyn.
I tried the steps that you suggested and am still having the issue.
I uninstalled/reinstalled the Flash player, noticed no 'click to flash plugins' and yes I'm running 64 bit safari.
The cache was deleted and Safari bounced.
With Safari, viewing the video that I mentioned in an earlier post, I notice dropped frames and even a pause when it reaches 45 seconds of the 11 minute video.
I tried the same test using Safari on a MacBook Pro with the same results.
Video is not very watchable with lots of dropped frames.
Using the same test on both machines, FireFox and Google Chrome play the video just fine with no issues.
So I don't feel that it's hardware or internet connection speeds.
Multiple test give pretty much the same consistent results.
So, I still contend that there is an issue with Safari.
BTW: Running iMac core-I7 2.93 with 8 GB 1333 MHz memory, MacBook Pro 17".
Very little else running to interfere, and OS is OS X 10.7.4.
I can run the same test with a Windows 7 machine with no issues.