How do I make thumbnail from .mp4 movie?

Question

How do I make thumbnail from .mp4 movie?

I need to make a thumbnail .jpg file of a frame of an .mp4 video. I've downloaded a couple of freeware apps (ScreenGrabber and Cocothumbx) that promised to do this but neither would work. I'm running OS 10.6.1. The .mp4 is about 76MB.

Any tips?

iMac G5, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 14, 2009 8:10 PM

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Answer 1

Wyodor

Level 6

19,930 points

Oct 15, 2009 3:07 AM in response to Henry Gutierrez

Should not be that difficult. It' all build in.

In QT Player 7 scroll to the frame your want.
Do Copy (Cmd-C). The image is now on the clipboard.
Open an image editor and make a file from clipboard.
Crop/Resize/Save the file.

OR

In QT player scroll to the frame you want.
Do Cmd-Shift-4 and then hit the spacebar. Click when your see the camera.
(Cmd-Shift-Control-4 to copy the screendump to clipboard)
Open the screendump in a image editor and Crop/Resize/Save.

Preview.app can create an image from the clipboard, crop and resize it.

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Answer 2

Oct 15, 2009 5:39 AM in response to Wyodor

Thanks--very helpful! I got that to work but the thumbnail has the player control bar across the bottom of the image. Is there a way to do this so that doesn't show?

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Answer 3

Oct 15, 2009 5:55 AM in response to Henry Gutierrez

Use Command - Shift - 4 keystrokes to turn your cursor into "crosshairs" so you can drag across any area to fine turn your screen capture.
When combined with the "spacebar" it captures the entire window (controller and title bar).

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Answer 4

Wyodor

Level 6

19,930 points

Oct 15, 2009 8:13 AM in response to Henry Gutierrez

If your using QT X then Command-click will hide the controller and titlebar.

Otherwise, Crop is the magic word.

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Answer 5

Oct 15, 2009 8:19 AM in response to Wyodor

Yep.
Works just fine in QuickTime X.
Good call.

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