Guide
Saving still frames from a video as images
A video is a stack of pictures. Sometimes you want one of them: the best moment of an interview as a cover image, the slide that was on screen at minute twelve, a row of thumbnails to review a long recording, or a frame to send in a bug report. This page opens a video in your browser, seeks to the times you choose and saves the frames as images, one by one or all together in a ZIP.
How a frame is taken
The page puts the video on a hidden element, moves it to the requested time and waits for the browser to display that frame. The frame is drawn onto a canvas at the chosen size and saved as PNG, JPG or WebP. Because the frame comes straight from the decoder that plays the video, it is the same picture you would see if you paused there. A requested time is rounded to the nearest frame the decoder can show, so a frame at “1.16 s” is the one that covers that moment.
Three ways to choose
One frame uses a slider to pick the time to a hundredth of a second. Evenly spaced takes a chosen number of frames across the video, with the first at the start and the last just before the end. Every few seconds takes a frame at 0, N, 2N and so on, up to 200 frames. A preview line on the button shows how many frames you are about to extract.
A worked example
Press Sample to record a three-second clip and extract the default of six evenly spaced frames. The page, whose video lasts 2.95 seconds, takes the frames at 0.00, 0.58, 1.16, 1.74, 2.32 and 2.90 seconds. That is 2.90 seconds (the length minus 0.05) divided into five equal steps of 0.58. The results appear as thumbnails with their time and size, and Download all 6 as ZIP produces an archive of six JPEG files named like sample-video-003-1.16s.jpg. In the test the six files differ in size, which shows the frames really differ, since the sample’s colour changes over time.
Formats and size
Choose PNG for text-heavy screen captures, JPG at 80 to 90% quality for photographic frames, and WebP when you want smaller files and your tools can read them. The Largest width list limits the output to 1920, 1280, 640 or 320 pixels, with 320 giving small thumbnails; the height follows the aspect ratio. Leave it at Original to keep the video’s own size.
Edge cases
Frames near the very end can be unavailable, which is why the last evenly spaced frame is placed 0.05 seconds before the end. Variable-frame-rate recordings and videos that need a long time to seek may take a moment per frame. A video that the browser cannot play, or one using an unsupported codec, shows an error when opened. Files recorded in a browser without a length are measured by seeking to the end.
Limits
At most 200 frames come out in one run, there is no scene-change detection, and frames are not de-duplicated. HDR or wide-colour video is converted to the standard colour space of the canvas. Nothing is uploaded.
Related tools
- Video to GIF turns a short range into an animation instead of stills.
- Video Cutter & Trimmer shortens the video first.
- Screen Recorder makes the recordings that often need frames pulled out.
- Webcam Test checks the camera that produced the footage.
Checked against the current version of the Extract Frames from Video on .