Recipes for your Digital Media Kitchen

Capture a Still Frame from a Video Using VLC

March 30, 2015

Written by

Andy Rush

Video

Ingredients

1 – Computer (Mac or Windows)

1 – VLC Software

1 – Video File (anything that VLC can open)

Directions

Navigate to the video file on your hard drive.
Right click on the file and select Open with… and select VLC. Alternatively you can open VLC and from the File Menu choose Open File… and select your video.
Advance the video to the frame you’d like to capture (Note: the “e” key will advance forward a frame at a time).
From the Video menu, select Snapshot, or use the keyboard shortcut Option-Command-s.
The snapshot (still frame) will be automatically saved to the Pictures folder.

Fediverse reactions

Comments

20 responses to “Capture a Still Frame from a Video Using VLC”

December 1, 2015

Dave

Are these screen captures or the actual video frames? I have run it on a 4k video and the image is about 7.5 megs.

Reply
1. December 1, 2015
  
  Andy Rush
  
  Dave, This will capture one video frame of whatever you’re playing in VLC. 7.5MB sounds about right because 1080p video gives a file of about 1.5 to 2MB.
  
  Reply
June 13, 2017

David

Thank you!!!

Reply
1. June 13, 2017
  
  Digital Media Chef
  
  Your Welcome.
  
  Reply
September 14, 2017

Chris

very helpful thanks

Reply
March 1, 2018

Kostas

Version 3.0 now won’t include subtitles in the captured image 🙁
Any workarounds?

Reply
October 13, 2018

Heidi

Thank you for the clear instructions – especially where the captured frame ends up!

Reply
September 28, 2019

Rick Deckard

What Pictures folder??

Reply
September 29, 2019

Eva

What happeded? This used to be a piece of cake before, but now on my computer (Windows10) I just can’t find the video menu anymore? No choices except pause, stop i. e.
Had to do it via my phone.
?!?

Reply
November 1, 2019

Digital Media Chef

Update! Even though this post is more than 4 years old, this feature still works on Windows 10 and Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave). Both Windows and Mac have a default “pictures” folder that the image gets saved to.

Reply
February 24, 2020

Doug Cutler

What settings would give the highest resolution?
I want to capture stills. Would I slow the frame rate way down?

Reply
March 7, 2020

Ansum

Note: In Windows the key combination is Shift+s.

Reply
April 23, 2020

Digital Media Chef

Doug – Stills are captured at the resolution of the video – i.e. 640×480, 720×480, 1280×720, 1920×1080, etc.

Reply
1. August 25, 2020
  
  Todd Hochman
  
  Hi there,
  If the “e” key advances the video frame by frame, which key can move the video “back” one frame at a time?
  Thx
  
  Reply
  1. August 25, 2020
    
    Digital Media Chef
    
    Yeah. So, funny story… to the best of my knowledge there is no “back” or previous frame keyboard shortcut.
    
    Reply
    1. August 25, 2020
      
      Todd Hochman
      
      Thank you for your quick reply…much appreciated.
      I have been slowly going thru a 2 hr concert footage and looking for those ideal frames to take a snapshot or capture the perfect still image…While I have had some good success, it would be so much easier and a lot less time if we could move the frames back and not just forward…when trying to find the best frame of a video we often need to see them all first and then go back to the best one which is difficult to do with just the normal slider…anyway, just my observation and thought…surely I can’t b the only one to b a bit frustrated by this deficit.
      Thx again digital media chef and have a great day and most of all Stay Safe!
      Todd
      
      Reply
      1. August 25, 2020
        
        Digital Media Chef
        
        Cheers, Mate, and you stay safe as well!
June 28, 2020

Kal Jorel

this is awesome! Thanks for posting this. VLC is great. Being able to do this is just another reason why.

Reply
November 20, 2020

David

When I press the camera icon all I get is a green square in the top L/H corner, can you help solve this.

Reply
1. September 9, 2021
  
  Digital Media Chef
  
  This may help – https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=144069
  
  Reply