Generate Screenshots With FFmpeg Linux

What You Will Need

• ffmpeg
• b3n's screenshot script

Installing FFmpeg in Debian

Run these commands as root. Also substitute "lenny" for your Debian distribution.

First install the debian-multimedia key ring.

• wget http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/d/debian-multimedia-keyring/debian-multimedia-keyring_2008.10.16_all.deb
• dpkg -i debian-multimedia-keyring_2008.10.16_all.deb

Now edit your apt sources.

• nano /etc/apt/sources.list

And add these two lines.

• deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main
• deb-src http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main

Then run

• apt-get update
• apt-get install ffmpeg

You can install FFmpeg on most flavours of Linux. This is just how to do it on Debian.


b3n's Screenshot Script

This script will extract a screenshot every 20 mins as many times as you specify. Save the text below as screenshot.sh then run these commands to take four shots from THE.FILE.avi

• chmod +x screenshot.sh
• ./screenshot.sh THE.FILE.avi 4

Quote:

#!/bin/bash
file=$1
times=$2
x=1
while [ $x -le $times ];
do
ffmpeg -ss $(echo "$x * 1200" | bc -l) -i "$file" -an -vframes 1 -f image2 images$(echo "$x").png;
x=$(( $x + 1 ))
done