Take a still from a video

Give a timestamp and get that frame back as a picture, at the video’s own resolution. It beats pausing and taking a screenshot, which captures whatever your screen was showing rather than what the file actually holds.

    • Where it runs

      A video is read in the browser. Nothing is uploaded.

    • No queue, no account

      It starts the moment you drop the file, and it never asks who you are.

    • No watermark

      What comes out is the file you made, with nothing added to it.

    How it works

    1. Drop a video onto the box above, or press it to choose one.
    2. Type the second you want, with decimals if you need to be precise.
    3. Press Take the frame.
    4. Download the still.

    Why this beats a screenshot

    A screenshot captures your screen, not the file. If the video is 4K and your window is showing it at a quarter of that, the screenshot is a quarter-resolution picture with the player’s scaling baked in. It will also catch the play button if you are unlucky with the timing.

    Reading the frame out of the file gives you the pixels the camera recorded, at the size they were recorded, with nothing drawn on top. For a document, a thumbnail or anything that will be looked at closely, that is a different quality of result.

    The timestamp, not the frame number

    You give a time in seconds because that is how people know where things are in a video. Frame numbers depend on the frame rate, and 29.97 frames a second is common enough that counting frames is a good way to end up one second out.

    The frame you get is the one displaying at that moment. Decimals work, so 12.4 is a little under halfway through the thirteenth second, which is usually precise enough to catch a specific gesture or expression.

    What format the still comes out as

    JPEG, because a frame of video is a photograph and JPEG is what photographs are for. It is also what every upload form and every document editor accepts without thinking about it.

    If you need transparency or a lossless copy, the conversion pages will turn the result into PNG afterwards. Doing that here by default would hand most people a file several times larger for a difference they would not see.

    Take a still from a video: common questions

    Is my video uploaded?

    No. The frame is read out of the file inside your browser and neither the video nor the picture leaves your device. Only the part of the file needed to reach that timestamp is even decoded, which is why it is quick on a long recording.

    What resolution is the still?

    The video’s own. If the file is 1920 by 1080 the picture is 1920 by 1080, regardless of how large the video was displayed on your screen. That is the main thing this does better than pausing and taking a screenshot.

    Can I get several frames at once?

    Not from this page. One timestamp gives one picture. If you want a sequence, the GIF tool takes a range of the video and turns it into an animation, which is usually what somebody asking for many frames actually wants.

    Why is the frame slightly different from what I saw when I paused?

    Because a player pauses on whatever frame it happened to be showing, and that is rarely exactly the time on the counter. Here the frame is the one displaying at the second you typed, which is repeatable — the same number gives the same picture every time.

    Is there a limit on the video length?

    No practical one. The file is read up to the timestamp you asked for rather than decoded end to end, so taking a frame from early in a two-hour recording costs about the same as taking one from a short clip.

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