Question

I need to generate a video in C#. I am messing around with Microsoft Expression Encoder but what I have is a series of bitmaps at specific time indices. Is there a way to use the Microsoft Expression Encoder to encode a video using a series of bitmaps as I have described?

Answer 1

It CAN be done, but Expression Encoder isn’t the right way to do it.

From a Microsoft employee in their forums:

This technique is called “time-lapse” or “stop-motion” and
unfortunately Expression Encoder by itself isn’t the right tool. You
could use an AVSynth script as a source for Encoder if you want, but
other tailored products to do this will just get you better results.

and further from the same employee here:

Unfortunately, Encoder doesn’t directly support this scenario. Our
pipeline just isn’t built to deal with that many input files. There
might be a way to do this with AVISynth (which we do support),
otherwise it’s likely that you’ll need to use 3rd party tool to create
a video file we can import. Besides using QTP, looks like people
trying to do this are using Adobe AfterEffects to do this. Others are
using freewares, like Photo Lapse 3 or VirtualDub.