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Sonevol
Asked: 2018-01-19 03:40:58 +0800 CST

How can I extract an image from a particular time of a video in Xubuntu 16.04?

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I am looking for a command line option.

For example, if I have the video sample-video.mp4, and I want to generate an image file sample-image.jpg from the video at time 00:00:26, what command should I give?

Also, it would be very helpful if you can explain in detail what the function of every argument of the command is.

16.04

2 Answers

  1. 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

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  2. Best Answer

    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.

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