I just want some confirmation, because I have the sneaking suspicion that I wont be able to do what I want to do, given that I already ran into some errors about ffmpeg not being able to overwrite the input file. I still have some hope that what I want to do is some kind of exception, but I doubt it.
I already used ffmpeg to extract a specific frame into its own image file, I've set the thumbnail of a video with an existing image file, but I can't seem to figure out how to set a specific frame from the video as the thumbnail. I want to do this without having to extract the frame into a separate file and I don't want to create an output file, I want to edit the video directly and change the thumbnail using a frame from the video itself. Is that possible?
You're probably better off asking it in IRC zeronode #ffmpeg-devel.
I'd look at "-ss 33.5" or a more precise filter "-vf 'select=gte(n,1000)'" both will give same or very similar result at 30 fps video.
You can pipe the image out to your own process via pipe if you like of course without saving it : "ffmpeg ... -f jpeg -|..."
Suppose I have a text file and background image.
I am wondering if ffmpeg can create a video like this:
I wish to add a frame to the end of a video just after it has been captured so I can make a timelapse video as the images are acquired.
So the idea is to take an image, use ffpmeg to make the video by adding each image just after it is aqcuired.
I've seen many questions about adding a set length of time of a logo type image or how to compile a whole bunch of single images to a video but not this.
Anyone got a good idea of what to try?
I have a series of png's that have an alpha channel as a background. Each file is named like file_name.0001.png and so on, in subsequent order. I'd like to join these png's into a video with ffmpeg and maintain the transparency.
I've tried a couple of things but I suspect I'm running into a codec issue. When I run ffmpeg, the video is created but the background is black.
If it makes a difference, I'm wanting to use the video in Microsoft Powerpoint. Thanks!
Edit
The suggested duplicate is very close to what I was looking for, thank you! The only reason it's not a complete solution is none of the options presented in the other thread work well with Microsoft Powerpoint. None of the codecs used in the suggested solution play well with Powerpoint. This is not the fault of ffmpeg, but of Powerpoint.
Though ffmpeg doesn't seem to be able to do what I need, I found that imagemagick did the trick. I was able to create a gif from the images and the alpha channel was preserved. I used the following:
convert -dispose 3 -coalesce images.*.png gif_file_name.gif
The -dispose 3 is critical as it tells imagemagick to clear the image prior to overlay, otherwise, you can see each image overlaid on each other (since they have the transparent background).
I couldn't get ffmpeg to create a video that preserved the alpha channel and was Powerpoint friendly (not the fault of ffmpeg). Though ffmpeg doesn't seem to be able to do what I need, I found that imagemagick did the trick. I was able to create a gif from the images and the alpha channel was preserved. I used the following:
convert -dispose 3 -coalesce images.*.png gif_file_name.gif
The -dispose 3 is critical as it tells imagemagick to clear the image prior to overlay, otherwise, you can see each image overlaid on each other (since they have the transparent background).
What is the best way to generate the ".VTT" file and the jpg sprite attached with it for the Tooltip Thumbnails of Jwplayer (http://www.jwplayer.com/blog/building-tooltip-thumbnails-with-encodingcom/- ?
I know how to make an image sprite with php, but i dont know how to make the screenshots of each video with the time in second.. I think there must be a server tool to do all the tasks it but i cant find it.
Thanks
I wrote a script to do this task. Given a video file (MP4 or M4v), generate thumbnail images, compress into a sprite, and generate a VTT file compatible with JWPlayer tooltip thumbnails. All of the image manipulation uses tools from ffmpeg, ImageMagick, and optionally sips and optipng. The WebVTT generation part, I had to write.
You will have to install ffmpeg & imagemagick, at a minimum to use this.
Github code is here: https://github.com/vlanard/videoscripts (under sprites/).
The basic gist is:
Create a bunch of thumbnails, e.g. every 45th second from a video
ffmpeg -i ../archive/myvideofile.mp4 -f image2 -bt 20M -vf fps=1/45 thumbs/myvideofile/tv%03d.png
Resize those thumbnails to be small, e.g. 100pixels wide
sips --resampleWidth 100 thumbs/myvideofile/tv001.png thumbs/myvideofile/tv002.png thumbs/myvideofile/tv003.png
OR if sips not available, use imageMagick utility:
mogrify -geometry 100x thumbs/myvideofile/tv001.png thumbs/myvideofile/tv002.png thumbs/myvideofile/tv003.png
Get the height & width dimensions of one of the thumbnails to use as the basis of our grid coordinates, using ImageMagick utility
identify -format "%g - %f" thumbs/myvideofile/tv001.png
which returns output like :
100x55+0+0 - tv001.png
from which we parse 100 and 55 as our Width & Height, and the general geometry of each thumbnail (W, H, X, Y)
We then generate our single spritemap from the individual thumbnails. We determine the target grid size (e.g. 2x2, 8x8) to suit the number of thumbnails we generated for this video, as well as passing in the sprite geometry, using an ImageMagick utility
montage thumbs/myvideofile/tv*.png -tile 2x2 -geometry 100x55+0+0 thumbs/myvideofile/myvideofile_sprite.png
Optionally we can run an extra compression step here to make the sprite smaller
optipng thumbs/myvideofile/myvideofile_sprite.png
We then generate a VTT file based on the number of thumbnails we created, using
the interval that we used to space out the thumbnails to label each time segment, and
using the known coordinates of each consecutive image within our sprite that maps to
the associated segment.
I've developed a Ruby gem to easily create .VTT file and sprite of thumbnails.
Thanks for inspiring #randalv!
You can take a look at it here:
https://github.com/scaryguy/jwthumbs
Usage
Instantiate your video file:
movie = Jwthumbs::Movie.new("YOUR_VIDEO.mp4")
Jwthumbs::Movie.new accepts second parameter as a options hash. You can configure several stuff at the same time you instantiate your video like this:
movie = Jwthumbs::Movie.new("YOUR_VIDEO.mp4", seconds_between: 60, sprite_name: "my_sprite_name.jpg")
or after you instentiated your video, you can use Jwthumbs::Movie file to configure things:
movie = Jwthumbs::Movie.new("YOUR_VIDEO.mp4")
movie.seconds_between = 60
movie.sprite_name = "my_sprite_name.jpg"
and then to create your thumbnails and .VTT file just run this command.
movie.create_thumbs!
I know this is already a few years old but I had the same problem and found a command line tool which generates sprites pretty fast and since 1.0.6 supports WebVTT creation out of the box. The name is mt and you can check it here.
Quoting from their documentation you can use it like this:
just run mt and provide any video file as args: mt video.avi
Some of the settings can be changed through runtime flags provided
directly to mt for more information just run mt --help
Option 1 :
You can use the encoding.com's API and tell them to export vtt file too
I recommend to read "How can I create time synced thumbnails for use in JW player?" explanation from encoding.com's Knowledge base
Option 2 :
use movie thumbnailer (mtn), this is a command line tools running on UNIX, Windows systems. But you will have to write a custom script to generate the VTT file corresponding
Super fast! Thanks to FFmpeg's libavcodec.
Command line program: canbe used on remote connections to co-location servers, or used in scripts.
Batch mode: recursively search directories for movie files. Run at lower priority (nice 10 on Linux, idle on Windows) by default.
To run at normal priority use -n option.
Thumbnails are group together in one jpeg file and can be saved individually too (-I
option).
Work fine with Unicode filenames in both Linux & Windows
(might need to change the font with -f fontfile).