VLC HowTo/Make thumbnails

How to create a thumbnail from a video

For all those people wanting a thumbnail from a video, use the following command (Windows):

vlc -V image --start-time 0 --stop-time 1 --image-out-format jpg --image-out-ratio 24 --image-out-prefix snap test.mpg vlc:quit

What it does:

When VLC media player runs it 'plays' the video for one second without actually showing the video on screen, and then quits, leaving us with a file named 'snap000000.jpg', containing an image of the first frame of the video.

How its works:

First select the image output with: -V image.

Next set the interval (in seconds) you want an image from with: --start-time 0 --stop-time 1 In my example the first second of the video. In that case you could omit the parameter --start-time. If you want an image from the 5th second fill in: --start-time 5 --stop-time 6

The image format will be .jpg because i provided: --image-out-format jpg. You could specify --image-out-format png to get a .png-image instead.

--image-out-ratio 24 specifies we want one image out of 24. In my case the video contains 24 images per second so this is the right value. If your video has more images per seconds you should increase this value to prevend you get more images as one. If the number is too high (for example 500) it still produces only one image, so the actual value is not so important as long as it is higher then the images per second.

--image-out-prefix snap specifies the filename must start with 'snap'. I tried to fill in a path but that doesn't work: the prefix specifies the basename of the file only. You could specify --no-image-out-replace. In that case Vlc produces the file 'snap.jpg'.

test.mpg specifies the video to play and finally vlc:quit forces vlc to quit when ready.