I have been developing software for quite a while and have created a little suite of utilities for my movie studio that help me a lot while making, converting and scaling video.

But now I'd like to make of them a single program in or, at least, use them from a single UI.

This is the target:

I have made three sketches in processing for different purposes and exported them as apps and use them when I need something specific; one is called ScalePNG which basically takes a whole directory full of PNG images and scales them to the desider factor chosen when the app starts (via JOptionDialog during setup() ), another app takes a directory full of PNG images and adds them one by one to a RAW video stream and then saves the resulting video in the same directory, it is call ExportRAW, and finally I created a utility to add dither to images and videos to enhance image quality when compressing the final videos wich is just called Ditherer. Every app starts by asking the user for entry files/directories, then loads all data and process it to render some output.

What I want to do now is to make a single UI from which I choose the input and then send it to one of my utility apps without having to open each app by separate. The UI would be made in, say, NetBeans,  and the messaging would take place after parameters have been determined.

So, the question is this:

After An app is compiled, is it possible to message it with, say, a string with a directory from another app in order to make it do the requested job without it asking for input, but instead, just receiving it and doing it's job? just like a library or (more the way I want it to work) a tool does it when used from processing :P

The main objective is to make my utility apps become plugins triggered from another central UI app. I have tried to investigate the whole JavaSE javadocs and the JAva Tutorial provided by sun but I don't seem to find the way to do this. I also revised how processing loads the tools an registers their methods but I just don't get it :P

 Thanks for your time and for sharing your expertise on this issue.