convert video formats

Question

Because the xbox 360 only supports specific video/audio codecs, I'd like to write a utility that would look in a directory and convert files to specific formats as they are dropped in the directory.

In some cases, it would only need to convert the container format (ie, mkv to wmv or avi) and in some cases it might need to convert the actual movie.

Of course I don't want to write the code that does the actual conversions so I'm wondering if there are open source projects, or free libraries or event command line tools that can do this effiently that I can use in an automated way.

Answer 1

You should look at ffmpeg, which is mostly a command-line program, although there is a library interface. That should be able to convert pretty much and format.

Answer 2

This is what DirectShow is for. An alternative might be Expression Encoder Not free but cheap. It has a command line mode and an API.