Make Video Snapshot

A tool to make snapshots of a video file.

This tool supports a lot of video formats and works in a console mode.

Contents

• Contents
• Input (Video) Formats
• Output (Image) Formats
• Building
• Installing
• Usage
• Version & Dependency
• Build Information
• Feedback

Input (Video) Formats

This tool supports all the video formats, supported by the FFmpeg library. However, sometimes there may be some difficulty with specific format, as the FFmpeg library is known to use the most default decoders for video files.

This tool uses libvpx-vp9 decoder for Google's VP9 video files to decode transparency correctly. Some other decoders may detect video stream index and pixel format incorrectly. For such cases this tool provides a method to set stream index and pixel format manually. More information about this is provided in the Usage section of this file.

Output (Image) Formats

This tool can export snapshots as PNG's and JPEG's. More information about output image formats is provided in the description of the Writer parameter in the Usage section of this file.

Building

• Install the latest version of CMake tool.

  • https://cmake.org/

• Install one or more IDEs with support for CMake:

  • Visual Studio by Microsoft.
    • CMake support in Visual Studio must be installed as a separate feature.
  • CLion by JetBrains;
    • CMake support is already built into CLion.

• Get the stable shared library of the FFmpeg project.

  • https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

• Update all FFmpeg-related files from the downloaded FFmpeg build.

  • DLL libraries, H (header) files and LIB files for:
    • AVCodec,
    • AVFormat,
    • AVUtil,
    • SWScale.
  • They should be located in the ffmpeg folder.

• Get the libjpeg library.

  • https://ijg.org/
  • Or use the provided get-libjpeg.bat script.

• Get the libpng library.

  • http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
  • Or use the provided get-libpng.bat script.

• Get the stb library.

  • https://github.com/nothings/stb
  • Or use the provided get-stb.bat script.

• Get the zlib library.

  • https://www.zlib.net/
  • Or use the provided get-zlib.bat script.

• Build the project using Visual Studio directly or via CLion.
  Why ? There are many reasons. The first one is because MinGW is not able to
  properly read object files (.obj) built for Microsoft Windows systems.

• Versions of dependencies are described in Version & Dependency section.

Building in Visual Studio

• Open CMake GUI, set folders, configure & generate files for Visual Studio.
• Install the CMake feature for Visual Studio.
• Open the created solution in Visual Studio and build it.

Building in CLion

• Install Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 (Community Edition).
• Install CLion and open the project in it.
• Open: Settings -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Toolchains.
  • Add the Visual Studio toolchain and make it default.
• Open: Settings -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> CMake.
  • Disable all the profiles related to MinGW.
  • Add two profiles for Visual Studio: Release & Debug.
• Click: Tool -> CMake -> Reset Cache and Reload Project.
  • In case of an error about CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM which is not found:
    • Install MinGW, including its version of the make tool,
    • Add MinGW's bin folder to your system's PATH environment variable.
• Build the project.

Installing

• Make DLL files of FFmpeg library accessible to the program:

  • either install the shared version of FFmpeg and add it's bin folder to PATH environment variable
  • or copy its DLL files into the program's directory

• Make DLL files of libpng library accessible to the program:

  • either install the libpng library and make it visible via PATH environment variable
  • or copy its DLL files into the program's directory

• Make DLL files of zlib library accessible to the program:

  • either install the zlib library and make it visible via PATH environment variable
  • or copy its DLL files into the program's directory

List of required DLL files is described in Version & Dependency section.

Usage

The program works in console mode and requires six (6) command line arguments:

<executable> <input_file> <stream_index> <pixel_format_id> <output_folder> <writer> <nth>

1. Input Video File.
   Path to the video file from which you want to make snapshots.

2. Video Stream Index.
   This parameter is optional and means an index of a video stream to capture.
   Numbers are starting from 0, i.e. stream #1 is index 0.
   Hint: -1 means auto, values >= 0 set an exact stream index.
   In most cases the automatic -1 is enough.

3. Pixel Format ID.
   This parameter is optional and means an ID of pixel format.
   The list of possible IDs is available in header files of FFmpeg.
   Hint: -1 means auto, values >= 0 set an exact pixel format.
   In most cases the automatic -1 is enough.

4. Output Folder.
   Path to the folder where you want your snapshots to be placed.
   Names of the snapshots will be in format N.xxx,
   where N is the frame number and xxx is the file extension.

5. Writer.
   Image encoder.
   Possible values are following:

   • libpng
     • PNG format with the best compression and alpha channel
   • libjpeg
     • JPEG format with the best quality (100)
   • stb
     • PNG format with no compression, but with an alpha channel

6. N-th.
   N-th frames to capture.
   If set as 0 or 1, all the frames will be captured.
   If set to N, where N is > 1, then each N-th frame will be captured.
   For example, if N = 10, then frames 10, 20, 30, ... will be captured.
   Note that the first frame is always captured independently of the setting.

Usage Example

MakeVideoSnapshot.exe D:\Videos\video.mp4 -1 -1 D:\Pictures libpng 10

Version & Dependency

This tool does not have its own strict versioning.

This tool was built using following libraries.

• FFmpeg version 6.1
  DLL Files: avcodec-60.dll, avformat-60.dll, avutil-58.dll, swscale-7.dll.

• libjpeg version 9e
  DLL Files: none, it is built-into as a static library.

• libpng version 1.6.40
  DLL Files: libpng16.dll.

• zlib version 1.3
  DLL Files: zlib.dll.

• stb, no versioning
  DLL Files: none.

Build Information

Link.

Feedback

If you have found a bug, have comments or want to suggest a new feature to be implemented, feel free to open an issue in this GitHub repository.