I'm currently interested in developing a specific video manipulation program. What I would like it to:
- take a video clip, export the frames as individual bitmaps
- create clips from a series of bitmaps (saved as 001.bmp, 002.bmp, etc) or other images
- allow for editing of time (ei how long to show each frame/image)

Ideally, this program would allow for some of the coding to be written up before hand in a txt file to take advantage of copying the numerous, numerous file locations for the images and the timing and editing the file in Word or something.

Since I've got something specific and a little weird in mind, I figured it would be a good excuse to get back into programming again.

Part of the problem is, I haven't programmed anything in 6 years, and that was in C++. Fortunately, my programming style is more work out logic, develop psuedocode, then search through books and lists of commands until I find what I need to get things to work, so actual KNOWLEDGE is secondary to an internet connection. ^-^

Any suggestions on where to start with my little insane project?

Actually, C++ (or some other C language, like perhaps c#) would be a very good language for you to code this project in. Figuring out the logic is definitely a good first step here. I would try to search for some basic C# tutorials, or C++ ones since it's easier to get compiler's for C++ than for C# as far as I know.

~Viz

Python is another choice you should consider especially given how some other application are now using Python, such as Blender 3D.

Well, first you have choose which video format do you want to use and wether you would like to code the video codec by yourself or use a open source library.

I would use C(++) as this gives great speed.
I'm sure you have allready converterd a dvd movie and know the time it takes to convert

You said you want to save each frame as bitmap?
So I would choose between the following 3 file formats: BMP,PCX,RAW.
Well if you have plenty of MB free I would choose RAW, very simple file format.
BMP is also very easy to understand.
However they are not compressed in any way.
If you don't like the two either, you can take PCX.
PCX is a little bit outdated but it uses RLE compression (Run Length Encoding), but also very easy to load
Take that three if you want to write your own image saving library.
If you want to use any other image format, I would take PNG and use libpng to handle the PNG stuff in my code.
It's up to you
Look on http://www.wotsit.org/ for additional infos (file format)

As for the video codec I don't know that much about it. but I think it's easier to pick a format thats not compressed

This post has been edited by tommydanger: Sep 12 2006, 03:52 PM