How to Convert Video Files to JPEG Using ffmpeg.Exe
FFmpeg.Exe is a program that allows video files to be converted into JPEGs, among other things. This image-capturing has many uses, such as creating a single image that can be used to identify a video file, or allowing inspection of a single frame from a video without having to keep a video player open and paused. FFmpeg is a command line tool, which means it is a text-based application that must be run through a command prompt. While command-line tools tend to be intimidating, the screen capturing process in FFmpeg is very straightforward once you know what to do.
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Instructions
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Directions
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Download FFmpeg.exe. While the developer's website offers source code that you can compile on your own, there are several pre-compiled versions available online. There is a link to one such version in the Resources section.
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Open a command prompt. In Windows, this is done by opening the Start menu, clicking "Run..." and entering "cmd" (without the quotation marks) into the "Open" field.
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Make sure that both FFmpeg and the movie file you want to convert are in the folder that the command prompt is displaying. To check if the file format of your video file is supported by FFmpeg, type "FFmpeg -formats" into the command line.
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Determine what frame you would like to convert into a JPEG. Note the exact time at which it occurs. Also note the exact name of the file and its extention. For example, if your video is called "vacation" and is an AVI file, the full file name would be vacation.avi. Also, decide how large you want the picture to be in pixels, such as 128x96 or 160x120. If no size is entered, the picture will be captured at the same frame size as the video.
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Enter the command to create your image. In the below example, we are taking the frame from the six-second mark (00:00:06) of vacation.avi. It is being captured at 160x120, and will be converted into vacation.jpeg. The command is:
ffmpeg -i vacation.avi -vframes 1 -ss 00:00:06 -s 160x120 -f image2 vacation.jpeg
If you wanted to capture the same frame, but without changing the size of the picture, you would simply remove "-s 160x120" from the command line. The file vacation.jpeg will be created in the same folder as the video file.
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