I am adding a video export feature to a 3D game. This feature allows you to set a desired framerate n for the video, then it rejiggers the main loop of the game to simulate 1000/n milliseconds per frame (even though, due to the overhead of the export, the actual framerate is significantly less.)

For the Linux version of the game, I am using libavcodec to accomplish this, and it's working fine.

However, this is a cross-platform game and I need to get this working on Windows as well. Given the way Windows (doesn't) handle dependencies, I want to use a library which is basically ubiquitous. There is an entrenched base of users with everything from Windows 2000 through Windows 7, and I don't want to alienate any of them.

This game is in C, but I'm not against doing sections in C++ if I have to.

Each frame, I am getting a bitmap with GLReadPixels. From there, I can convert to BGR, YUV, whatever the API requires. I'm flexible there.

I'm pretty new to Windows development (having very rarely booted Windows for the past two years,) so if I'm thinking about this the wrong way don't hesitate to let me know.


Oh, one more thing: I need to be able to use the library in a GPL compatible way (that is, if the library isn't GPL compatible, it MUST be dynamically linked at runtime!)


Thanks in advance,
-Max.