Extract a frame from a video
To grab a thumbnail, illustrate an article or keep a specific moment from a video, ffmpeg extracts a frame at full resolution, much sharper than a screenshot of the player.
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How to use it
- Install ffmpeg if you haven't already.
- Open a terminal in the folder containing your file.
- Copy the generated command, adjust the file names if needed, then run it.
- Open the resulting file to check the result.
PNG or JPEG?
PNG keeps the decoded frame exactly as it is, losslessly, but weighs several megabytes at 1080p. JPEG at maximum quality (-q:v 2) is four to ten times smaller, with a difference that's invisible to the eye: it's the right choice for the web.
Several frames at once
For a contact sheet of thumbnails or a frame-by-frame analysis, it's better to extract a series of frames with a single command.
Extract all the frames from a video
Frequently asked questions
The frame isn't exactly the one I wanted
Specify the time with tenths of a second, for example 00:00:05.4. When placed before the source file, the -ss option is fast and accurate with recent versions of ffmpeg.
What is the resolution of the image?
The same as the video: a 1080p video gives an image of 1920 × 1080 pixels.
How do I extract several frames?
Use the dedicated page, which extracts one frame every N seconds or every frame of a video.