Question

There is an IP web camera that I wrote a .NET class for sometime ago. It s basically a Timer implementation that pings a snapshot CGI script from the camera every five seconds. The camera itself is very rudamentary; it does not have any sort of API for me to work with, the only thing I can do programmatically (remotely) is invoke this script. The script returns a 640x480 JPEG image. Simple.

Now what I need to be able to do is take a days worth of these images, and create a "time lapse" AVI video stream out of it that will eventually be embedded into a web page. How can I do this with VB.NET?

Answer 1

.net doesn t directly support video formats. Your best option would be to use a 3rd party tool to generate the .avi.

ffmpeg is one option. You could access it directly via a command line like this:

ffmpeg -f image2 -i img%d.jpg /output/a.mpg

You would need to name your images img1.jpg, img2.jpg etc. For more details see the ffmpeg faq. You should also find details in the faq for how to output different video formats.

You can start a process from vb using Process.Start(). Something like this:

Process.Start("ffmpeg.exe", "-f image2 -i img%d.jpg /output/a.mpg")

You could also take a look at ffmpeg-sharp or Tao.FFmpeg, they are .net wrappers for the ffmpeg libraries. I haven t tried either personally, but it looks like it might help you out.

Another alternative would be to take a look at MEncoder, which has similar functionality. You should be able to look up a similar command line for this tool.

[Related SO question: 271003]

Answer 2

FFMpeg has windows binaries and is very popular.

Making movies from image files using ffmpeg/mencoder

You ll have to check whether the available output formats suit you.

Answer 3

This is a C# wrapper by someone at Codeproject:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/avifilewrapper.aspx

That wrapper should provide you with what you need.

Answer 4

There are several command-line tools that can take a series of images and output an AVI file. I would suggest you call one of them from your app.

I would provide links to suggestions, but it has been years since I ve used one.

Edit: apparently you can do this using ffmpeg: http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html

For creating a video from many images:

ffmpeg -f image2 -i foo-%03d.jpeg -r 12 -s WxH foo.avi

The syntax foo-%03d.jpeg specifies to use a decimal number composed of three digits padded with zeroes to express the sequence number. It is the same syntax supported by the C printf function, but only formats accepting a normal integer are suitable.

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