Save a frame from a video as a full-size image

How to use the video thumbnail grabber

1. Drop a video onto the box or click to choose one.
2. Type the Time of the frame. It starts at 0:01. Accepted forms include 83.5, 1:23.5, 0:01:23.5 and 1m23.5s.
3. Choose the Image format: PNG (lossless, the default), JPEG (smaller) or WebP.
4. For JPEG or WebP, set the JPEG/WebP quality slider (50–100%, default 92%).
5. Press Capture frame, check the preview and download the image.

What it does and when to use it

A single still from a video has many uses: a custom thumbnail for an upload, a cover image for a blog post, a slide from a recorded lecture, a frame from a home video to print, or evidence of what a screen showed at a given moment. This tool saves exactly the frame you ask for, at the video’s full size, instead of a lower-resolution screenshot of a player window.

For many frames at once, the video frame extractor saves evenly spaced images as a ZIP, and the video contact sheet maker puts a grid of frames on one page. To turn a still into a smaller or different image format afterwards, try the image compressor.

How it works

The tool reads the video with Mediabunny in a background worker, jumps to the nearest keyframe before your time, and decodes forward to the frame that is on screen at that moment. It draws that frame on a canvas at the display size, so any rotation stored by a phone is applied, and encodes the canvas as PNG, JPEG or WebP. The video is never uploaded and nothing else is downloaded.

Worked examples

• A lecture slide. Time 1:23.5, PNG. On a 1920×1080 recording the result summary reads “Frame at 1:23.50 · 1920×1080”, and the file is named after the video, for example lecture-1-23-50.png.
• A YouTube-style thumbnail. Time 42, JPEG at 92%. The frame at 0:42 is saved as a full-size JPEG, much smaller than the PNG would be.
• The very first frame. Time 0, PNG. Note that many clips start on a black or faded frame; 0:01 (the default) is often a better choice.

Limits and tips

• The frame shown is the one on screen at that time. With 30 fps video, frames are about 0.033 seconds apart, so 1:23.50 and 1:23.51 may give the same image.
• Typos are caught. A time the tool cannot read returns “Enter the time as seconds (83.5) or minutes:seconds (1:23.5).”
• HDR footage from newer phones may look flatter or darker as a still, because the image formats used here are standard range.
• AVI, WMV and FLV files are not read here; convert them first with the video converter.