( to ) ? be : ! be;

Creating video thumbnails using ffmpeg (9,123 views)

Generating thumbnails/screenshots of a video is useful in many ways. Youtube and many other video sites use this to show a preview of the video as a small thumbnail. Google video captures a series of thumbnails from a video at various time intervals to show a better video preview.

There is a simple way to generate thumbnails in Linux using ffmpeg, a very very useful tool for processing videos. Let us generate a thumbnail for this video. Download the video and rename it to test.avi.

Then, run this command,

ffmpeg  -itsoffset -4  -i test.avi -vcodec mjpeg -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 test.jpg

This command generates a 320×240 sized PNG thumbnail at the 4th second in the video. The output looks like this.
video thumbnail

If you do not have ffmpeg installed and are using Debian/Ubuntu, do,

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

A series of thumbnails, at 4, 8, 12 and 16 seconds.
video thumbnail

ffmpeg  -itsoffset -4  -i test.avi -vcodec mjpeg -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 test.jpg
ffmpeg  -itsoffset -8  -i test.avi -vcodec mjpeg -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 test.jpg
ffmpeg  -itsoffset -12  -i test.avi -vcodec mjpeg -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 test.jpg
ffmpeg  -itsoffset -16  -i test.avi -vcodec mjpeg -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 test.jpg

useful links

Happy thumbnailing!

Tags: ffmpeg, linux, thumbnail, video

"Creating video thumbnails using ffmpeg" was published on March 29th, 2008 and is listed in linux, ubuntu, video.

Follow comments via the RSS Feed | Leave a comment | Trackback URL

Comments on "Creating video thumbnails using ffmpeg": 14 Comments

aris wrote,

how if my filename is with space instead?!
ex: my video.avi

thanks for reply

Link | April 13th, 2008 at 6:49 am
prashanthellina wrote,

Try enclosing the filename in double quotes like this –> “my video.avi”

Link | April 13th, 2008 at 7:42 am
aris wrote,

still no effect..
i trying to upload
$filePath = $uploadDir.$fileName;

ffmpeg -i “.$filePath.” -y -s 320×240 -ab 32000 -ar 22050 -g 160 -cmp 3 -subcmp 3 -mbd 2 -flags aic+cbp+mv0+mv4+trell “.$convPath

where $filePath is source path where files is already uploaded.
upload is successfull but when ffmpeg start to conversion i got no files at $convPath.but vice versa if i use filename with no spaces instead.

Link | April 13th, 2008 at 7:53 am
prashanthellina wrote,

The command you posted here is missing a ” at the end. When the command runs, does it throw any errors?

Link | April 13th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
mike wrote,

Using “-ss” rather than “-itsoffset” is considerably faster. e.g. ffmpeg -ss 12 -i test.avi -vcodec mjpeg -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 320×240 test.jpg

Link | May 20th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
prashanthellina wrote,

Thanks for the info, Mike.

Link | June 1st, 2008 at 10:34 pm
sagar wrote,

Hi, is there any possibility to create thumbnails in windows environment

Link | July 17th, 2008 at 10:24 am
prashanthellina wrote,

Sagar, I have not tried it, but I think ffmpeg can be compiled for windows.

Link | July 17th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
sagar wrote,

Thanks Prashanth Ellina…

Link | July 18th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Roger wrote,

if you canot instal ffmpeg on the server is there another option to generate thumbnails on linux

Link | October 13th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
jojo wrote,

@mike , Very useful command , thanks .

Link | November 23rd, 2008 at 10:52 pm
dong wrote,

It is not work on Linux

Link | December 12th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
dong wrote,

Help?? Please make it work on Linux

Link | December 12th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Tech Musing on C&P » Blog Archive » Audio Stitching with ffmpeg wrote,

[…] Creating Video Thumbnails using FFmpeg (for -itsoffset) […]

Link | December 15th, 2008 at 7:32 am