Creating Thumbnails from a Video

Usually when you want to share a video, people often ask for screenshots. Sometimes it is better to give several small thumbnails rather than just one big screenshot. This simple tutorial will tell you how to do such thing with ease.

First, you will need the Media Player Classic (MPC). It is a free software that you can get from sourceforge. If you are using Windows XP then you just have to download it here.

Now you already have the MPC, follow these instruction:

• Extract the zip file and run the mplayer.exe
• Open the video you'd like to use as a source
• Click on File -> Save Thumbnails

• On the dialogue box, specify your output filename and type (jpg or bmp). You can also specify the number of thumbnails you want to make by setting the number of rows and colums. You can also specify the witdh of the output file.
• Press Save and leave everything else to MPC
• Now you have your thumbnails

Important note:

If you get the error message "Get Current Image Failed, hr = 8000ffff", do this following:

• Click View -> Options
• Open Playback -> Output

• Change the DirectShow Video from Overlay Mixer to anything else (I have tried VMR7 windowed and VMR9 renderless and it's work perfectly)
• Click OK
• Restart your MPC