How to Extract Video Frame and Save as JPEG in Windows

On special events like the wedding ceremonies and birthday parties, we often use both a still image camera and a video camera to capture the memories. But sometimes we record a really beautiful series of events as a video and fail to snap it using the still camera. In those cases, you can still capture the frame from the recorded video and save it as a JPEG image easily. Here is how:

1. Extracting video frame using VLC Media Player

VideoLAN VLC media player is perhaps the most popular video player today. The reason for its popularity is the rich set of features and support for almost all media files.

In order to capture screenshot of a video in VLC media player, you can just play the video using VLC media player and then select Video and then Take Snapshot. You can pause the video before using this method.

Extract Video Frame and Save as JPEG

The video snapshots are saved in the Pictures folder under the Windows’ user profile. The snapshots are in PNG format but you can easily convert them into JPEG images using a software like IrfanView.

2. Extracting video frame using MPC Black Edition

MPC Black Edition is the smoothest video player for Windows and just like VLC, it also supports many media formats. You can install MPC-BE and start playing all types of video file without having to install any codecs. After playing a video in MPC-BE, you can simply select File → Save Image from the menubar to save the screenshot in JPEG format.

Extract Video Frame and Save as JPEG

3. Extracting video frame using FFmpeg

If you are comfortable working with command line interface (CLI) tools then you would be delighted to snag video frames using the open-source FFmpeg. After installing FFmpeg, you can use the following command in order to capture the video frames and save them as JPEG images:

 ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -ss 00:00:06 -vframes 1 screenshot.jpg

Extract Video Frame and Save as JPEG

In this command, video.mp4 is the source video file, you are capturing the video frame at time 6 seconds and the screenshot is being saved as screenshot.jpg. You can adjust these parameters to suit your needs.