Creating video from a program help

July 9, 2009 4:16 PM

I'm looking for a library, package, product or some sample code in either JAVA or Visual Basic that would allow me to create a video from my program. I have some software tools I've developed and I'd like some functionality to my program that could take existing video clips and pictures and then assemble them into a video. I would like the final video format to be FLV however any popular format would do. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Have a great one.
posted by JohnGL to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Adobe Captivate?
posted by GuyZero at 4:32 PM on July 9

Here's an open source C++ application that you could presumably adapt for your needs: EasyBMPtoAVI.
Also, in plain C, Revel, the Really Easy Video Encoding Library
AviFile, also in C++, and here's an article on wrappering it for C# that might be instructive for doing the same in Java or Visual Basic.
posted by XMLicious at 7:16 PM on July 9

GuyZero's Captivate suggestion is spot-on. In case that doesn't work out, there's also Camtasia, and the open source Camstudio. What you're looking for is screencasting software, and Wikipedia has a nice comparison list.
posted by spiderskull at 8:49 PM on July 9

Actually I'm a little fuzzy on whether you want to do screen recordings or whether you want to programatically generate video. If the former, my suggestion. If the latter, XMLicious' suggestion.
posted by GuyZero at 9:12 PM on July 9

Quicktime Pro, for $29.95, assembled my thousands of stills into acceptable videos.
Apple.com sells it, but it also runs on Windows.
posted by the Real Dan at 9:38 PM on July 9

Thanks so much to everyone who has tried to help thus far. I'm sorry I was unclear. I'm trying to programatically generate video. In other words I'm going to write a program that creates video. There will be no human interaction. I want to automate the generation of video files. Thanks again and have a great one.
posted by JohnGL at 9:39 PM on July 9

I think both ffmpeg and mencoder can concatenate existing images or videos into a new video.
posted by PueExMachina at 12:42 AM on July 10