Guides

Windows – Extract Image Frames from Videos

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Have you ever wanted to convert a video to images (extract multiple screenshots) or generate a thumbnail collage from video screenshots (eg 1 image = 16 thumbnails)?

1. Convert video to images (extract screenshots)

Yes, I know most players have a “take screenshot” kind of option / shortcut key and you can save screenshots with the press of a button. But I want, for example, to convert a two minute video into 120 images (1 image every second).

For this you need just the ffmpeg executable downloadable from here: https://ffmpeg.org/     or    https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/tag/latest

Put just the ffmpeg.exe file into your movie folder, then open Command Prompt and add the following command: ffmpeg -i VIDEO.mp4 -vf fps=1/1 img%04d.jpg

  • ffmpeg = use ffmpeg executable you just downloaded
  • -i VIDEO.mp4 = input video file
  • -vf fps=1/1 = create one image every 1 second of the video
  • img%04d.jpg = output image name template (will look like “img0001.jpg, img0002.jpg…”)

If you are using Powershell you might need to add .\ in front of the above command: .\ffmpeg -i VIDEO.mp4 -vf fps=1/1 img%04d.jpg

The result is something like the following (note: the code might show errors in cmd/powershell depending how your video was created, but the images should still be generated):

2. Generate thumbnails from screenshots

For this you need Media Player Classic that you can get from here: https://www.filecatchers.com/media-player-classic-portable/

Just open the video in Media Player Classic, then go to File – Save Thumbnails…

Then browse for the location where you want your thumbnail image be saved, choose options like number of thumbnails (rows x columns), image type and quality, then click Save.

Then Media Player Classic will go through your video, extract the screenshots and generate your thumbnail collage.

In order to have a better view of the quality of the video, you can either choose less rows and columns (3 x 3) or a greater image width. I used the default 4 x 4, 1024 px and here’s the result: