How can I extract an image from a particular time of a video in Xubuntu 16.04?
You can use ffmpeg
ffmpeg -loglevel quiet -ss 26 -i sample-video.mp4 -t 1 -f image2 anyfilename.jpeg
- -loglevel set the logoutput to quiet because ffmpeg is very chatty
- -ss is seek (in seconds, i.e. where you want to take the snapshot)
- -i input video file
- -t timeframe of the snapshot (in seconds)
- -f filetype
You can also play around with the options, like control quality of the jpeg output -q:v <linear integer 1-10>
or resolution -s 480x300
.
Some more ideas here
VLC Method
cvlc sample-video.mp4 --start-time=26 --run-time=1 --rate=1 --video-filter=scene --vout=dummy --aout=dummy --scene-ratio=24 --scene-prefix=sample-image --scene-replace vlc://quit
cvlc - because its command-line and we don't want any windows opening. also, this means we can run it without X11.
--start-time=26 - is the exact position of the snapshot in seconds
- --run-time=1 - how long the video will "play" in seconds. We play it for one second to make a screenshot of this second
- --rate=1 when to take the screenshot. This basically means "every second" and is useful, if you have longer files, to take a screenshot every 60 seconds or every 5 minutes
- --video-filter=scene tell VLC that we want to take screenshots
- --vout=dummy no output for video on X11, we don't need it
- --aout=dummy no output for audio, we don't need it
- --scene-ratio=24 we tell VLC that there are approx 24 frames per second
- --scene-prefix=sample-image the filename of your screenshot
- --scene-replace replace any files that are called like your screenshot
sample-image.png
with your current screenshot. If you omit this, VLC will start numbering the screenshots - vlc://quit quit vlc once we are finished
Complete documentation here
You can use mplayer
(from package mplayer
, not installed by default):
mplayer -vo jpeg -ss 00:00:26 -frames 1 sample-video.mp4
This will create the file 00000001.jpg
so you have to rename it. As far as I know there's no way to specify a filename.
-vo jpeg
means you want JPEG output, -ss 00:00:26
seeks to the given position, -frames 1
means to process one frame and then quit.