How can I extract a good quality JPEG image from a video file with ffmpeg

Question

Currently I am using this command to extract the images  ffmpeg -i input mp4 output  03d jpeg  But how can I improve the JPEG image quality

User · Accepted Answer

Use -qscale v to control quality Use -qscale v  or the alias -q v  as an output option   Normal range for JPEG is 2-31 with 31 being the worst quality  The scale is linear with double the qscale being roughly half the bitrate  Recommend trying values of 2-5  You can use a value of 1 but you must add the -qmin 1 output option  because the default is -qmin 2    To output a series of images  ffmpeg -i input mp4 -qscale v 2 output  03d jpg  See the image muxer documentation for more options involving image outputs  To output a single image at  60 seconds duration  ffmpeg -ss 60 -i input mp4 -qscale v 4 -frames v 1 output jpg  Also see  FFmpeg FAQ  How do I encode movie to single pictures  FFmpeg Wiki  Create a thumbnail image every X seconds of the video

User · Answer

Output the images in a lossless format such as PNG  ffmpeg exe -i 10fps h264 -r 10 -f image2 10fps h264  03d png   Edit Update  Not quite sure why I originally gave a strange filename example  with a possibly made-up extension   I have since found that -vsync 0 is simpler than -r 10 because it avoids needing to know the frame rate  This is something like what I currently use  mkdir stills ffmpeg -i my-film mp4 -vsync 0 -f image2 stills my-film- 06d png  To extract only the key frames  which are likely to be of higher quality post-edit   ffmpeg -skip frame nokey -i my-film mp4 -vsync 0 -f image2 stills my-film- 06d png   Then use another program  where you can more precisely specify quality  subsampling and DCT method     e g  GIMP  to convert the PNGs you want to JPEG  It is possible to obtain slightly sharper images in JPEG format this way than is possible with -qmin 1 -q v 1 and outputting as JPEG directly from ffmpeg

[video] How can I extract a good quality JPEG image from a video file with ffmpeg?

Use `-qscale:v` to control quality

To output a series of images:

To output a single image at ~60 seconds duration:

Also see

Examples related to video

Examples related to ffmpeg

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