LinuxQuestions.org - help converting an Image sequenece.....nothing is working

ok i'm trying to take a image sequence of tiffs and convert them into any format that a casablanca can read, maybe an mpeg2 in the form of a dvd, i hope, but it doesn't matter as i can deal with that using ffmpeg once i get a video like mpeg/mpeg2/avi/dv

the tiffs were mad by xmrm which came with a program to convert its tiffs to an mpeg by converting tiffs to ppm, then to .Y .U and .V then to mpeg using mpeg buts its really old and won't compile so that isn't working

i looked around and supposedly its possible using ffmpeg (method is here), but that just gives me I/O errors saying the files are truncated or corrupt (i tried it using the .tif, .ppm, and .Y/.U/.V formats of the sequence, all gave the same error), i also looked at mencoder/mplayer but i couldn't figure out a working command

so far the only working option i have found is using quicktime pro on my mac, but my mac is slow and old and i would prefer if i could just put all the necessary commands into a shell script and run it that way on my much faster linux computer (as i plan on doing 130+ sequences each with a hundred or so images in the future)

so does anyone have a working solution for this? this is driving me nuts....