ffmpeg is a multiplatform, open-source library for video and audio files. Here are a few commands for most of your conversion needs!
Getting infos from a video file
ffmpeg -i video.avi
Turn X images to a video sequence
ffmpeg -f image2 -i image%d.jpg video.mpg
This command will transform all the images from the current directory (named image1.jpg, image2.jpg, etc…) to a video file named video.mpg.