continously add picture to video

Every x minutes I grab an image开发者_高级运维 from a network-cam. Now i want to add this picture to an existing video file - on the fly.

I don't want to keep numerous image files and then encode them once in a while with e.g.

mencoder mf://@${LIST} -mf type=jpg:fps=${FPS} ...

The video format/codec doesn't really matter, as long as standard tools (mplayer, ffmpeg, vlc, ...) can handle it.

Any ides or suggestions? Thanks in advance!

One obvious way which should work (at least according to my first tests) is to just write the new jpeg image to the end of the video file - so the video is a mjpeg stream.

cat ${PIC} >> ${VIDEO}

This is an answer to my question, however i was looking for something consuming less space than the pictures stored each by its own would take up.

Other hints?