what technologies are available for programmatic video editing?

Question

Problem:

Users should be able to upload high resolution video clips from within an app (fat client) that runs on their system. inside this app, i need an framework or lib that is capable of converting an video into an low resolution version.

and on the other side, i need something that is capable of building up video right away from images, animating them in a way that they look like videos.

Answer 1

I would recommend the following:

Windows

• DirectShow SDK
• Media Foundation SDK
• Quicktime SDK

Mac

• QTKit Framework

Linux

• GStreamer

If you need a cross platform solution I would recommend the commercial MainConcept CodecSDK, which has some of the best video codec implementations around.

Answer 2

You don't say which system, so I start this with an answer for Linux: Have a look at phonon and gstreamer. If you don't mind a command line interface, check out avidemux and mencoder (part of MPlayer).

Note that phonon is also available on Windows and Mac.