Note: This site is currently "Under construction". I'm migrating to a new version of my site building software. Lots of things are in a state of disrepair as a result (for example, footnote links aren't working). It's all part of the process of building in public. Most things should still be readable though.

Extract A Single Frame From A Video With ffmpeg

Code

ffmpeg hide_banner -loglevel panic \
-ss 2.23 -i input.mp4 -frames:v 1 \
-y output.jpg

Notes

  • `-hide_banner`` and `-loglevel panic`` turn off the output unless something goes wrong. Basically they put ffmpeg into quite mode

  • `-ss`` is for start second. It's a floating point/decimal number for where to extract the frame from

  • `-i input.mp4`` identifies the input file

  • `-frames:v 1` limits the extraction to a single frame

  • `-y` is used to overwrite the output file if it already exists. (Otherwise ffmpeg asks if you want to overwrite every time it's run)

  • `output.jpg` is the output file

References