How do I ffmpeg contact sheet?
Samples frames across the video and lays them out in a grid as a single image.
Make a contact sheet from a video
Samples frames across the video and lays them out in a grid as a single image.
ffmpeg -i https://cdn.rendobar.com/assets/examples/sample.mp4 -vf "select='not(mod(n\\,30))',scale=320:-2,tile=3x3" -frames:v 1 -t 5 out.png- Encode
- 217 ms
- Output
- 127.8 KB
- Cost
- $0.0016
- Result
- 960x540
job_193c801f267c4d29
The part everyone gets wrong
tile consumes frames to fill the grid, so if your select expression yields fewer than the grid needs, FFmpeg writes nothing at all rather than a partial sheet. Sample more densely than you think you need, and -frames:v 1 stops it writing a second sheet.
Frequently asked questions
What goes wrong most often?
tile consumes frames to fill the grid, so if your select expression yields fewer than the grid needs, FFmpeg writes nothing at all rather than a partial sheet. Sample more densely than you think you need, and -frames:v 1 stops it writing a second sheet.
Do I need FFmpeg installed?
Not with Rendobar. The command on this page ran through the API against a URL, with no local FFmpeg and no server. The job id below it is the job that produced these numbers.
More recipes, all measured
Extract audio from video with FFmpeg Pulls the audio track out of a video, copying it without re-encoding when the format allows. Extract a thumbnail from a video Grabs a single frame as a JPEG or PNG, seeking to the timestamp first so it is fast on long files. Export every frame as an image Writes each frame to a numbered image file, or samples at a fixed rate to keep the count manageable. Convert MP4 to GIF with FFmpeg Turns a video into an animated GIF using a generated palette, which is the difference between a usable GIF and a muddy one.
Run this without installing FFmpeg
This exact command ran through the API against a URL.