Getting a thumbnail from a video url or data in iOS

Best method I've found... MPMoviePlayerController thumbnailImageAtTime:timeOption

NSURL *videoURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:url];

MPMoviePlayerController *player = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:videoURL];

        UIImage *thumbnail = [player thumbnailImageAtTime:1.0 timeOption:MPMovieTimeOptionNearestKeyFrame];

        //Player autoplays audio on init
        [player stop];
        [player release];

Check this link for an alternative: thumbnailImageAtTime: now deprecated - What's the alternative?

The answer to this question is that one can now with 4.0 iOS get thumbnails using AVFoundation, the following code where the class property url is the movie url, will do the trick (you can get the thumbnail at any time, in the example its at time 0)

-(void)generateImage
{
    AVURLAsset *asset=[[AVURLAsset alloc] initWithURL:self.url options:nil];
    AVAssetImageGenerator *generator = [[AVAssetImageGenerator alloc] initWithAsset:asset];
    generator.appliesPreferredTrackTransform=TRUE;
    [asset release];
    CMTime thumbTime = CMTimeMakeWithSeconds(0,30);

    AVAssetImageGeneratorCompletionHandler handler = ^(CMTime requestedTime, CGImageRef im, CMTime actualTime, AVAssetImageGeneratorResult result, NSError *error){
        if (result != AVAssetImageGeneratorSucceeded) {
            NSLog(@"couldn't generate thumbnail, error:%@", error);
        }
        [button setImage:[UIImage imageWithCGImage:im] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
        thumbImg=[[UIImage imageWithCGImage:im] retain];
        [generator release];
    };

    CGSize maxSize = CGSizeMake(320, 180);
    generator.maximumSize = maxSize;
    [generator generateCGImagesAsynchronouslyForTimes:[NSArray arrayWithObject:[NSValue valueWithCMTime:thumbTime]] completionHandler:handler];

}

-(UIImage *)generateThumbImage : (NSString *)filepath
{
    NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:filepath];

    AVAsset *asset = [AVAsset assetWithURL:url];
    AVAssetImageGenerator *imageGenerator = [[AVAssetImageGenerator alloc]initWithAsset:asset];
    imageGenerator.appliesPreferredTrackTransform = YES;
    CMTime time = [asset duration];
    time.value = 0;
    CGImageRef imageRef = [imageGenerator copyCGImageAtTime:time actualTime:NULL error:NULL];
    UIImage *thumbnail = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:imageRef];
    CGImageRelease(imageRef);  // CGImageRef won't be released by ARC

    return thumbnail;
}

you can get the frame using the time.value suppose you want to 1 second frame then use the

time.value = 1000 //Time in milliseconds