How do i combine a series of images (jpeg preferably) into a movie format such as avi or mpeg? Thanks 
Quicktime Pro
there is an open source compositing package, and it looked impressive but cant remember the name - not very helpful i know. But if someone does know please post 
I tried looking googling for compositing programs and quicktime pro (for linux), but had no luck finding a download site for either programs...If anyone could post a direct link, it would be most useful, thanks!
have a look here...
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
I've used mencoder from the mplayer package with some success.
eg: (in the dir with the jpg images...)
mencoder *.jpg -mf on:w=640:h=480:type=jpg:fps=15 -vop scale=320:240 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -o output.avi
You can get mplayer from here which will also give you one of the more capable
linux media players aswell as the encoder. Without having to install a complete
non-linear video editing system.
Here is the relevant mencoder documentation from the mplayer documentation
Gef :]
that's it, thanks!
I believe you have to compile mplayer in order to take advantage of all the extra quicktime codecs(sorenson) like quicktime and media player. The precompiled rpm's dont have them by default. Mpeg and divx ability comes with the rpm by default I believe.
http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/
That solution seems to work great! Just finnished coding a c++/QT front end (VERY simple one)
Thanks for the help guys!