Does anybody have a known reliable way to create a video from a series of image files? Before you mod me down for not searching for the answer before posting the question,
You can use VideoLan and I'd recommend it.
I've had direct experience in a C# application with VideoLan doing these two things:
The fact that VideoLan has a command-line interface is a great thing. And VLC supports a command-line option that disables any visual element; so the VLC GUI doesn't pop up and neither does a command-line window. Thus, in a C# application you can farm out the video-related work to the VLC client. C# has the Process class which can manage your vlc.exe instances for you. It ends up being a pretty neat solution.