movie thumbnailer (mtn)

movie thumbnailer (mtn) -- saves thumbnails (screenshots) of movie or video files to jpeg files. It uses FFmpeg's libavcodec as its engine, so it supports all popular codecs, e.g. divx h264 mpeg1 mpeg2 mp4 vc1 wmv xvid, and formats, e.g. .3gp .avi .dat .mkv .wmv. mtn is open source software. It should run on all operating systems which have gcc, FFmpeg, and GD, for example, Linux and Windows.

mtn works similar to "mplayer -benchmark -nosound -quiet -zoom -vf scale=420:-3,tile=2:2 -vo jpeg:outdir=. -sstep 60 file.avi". but sstep and framestep options didn't work very well for me.

mtn comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details see file gpl-2.0.txt.

For project information, please visit SourceForge project summary page

Features:

Super fast! Thanks to FFmpeg's libavcodec.
Command line program: can be used on remote connections to co-location servers, or used in scripts.
Batch mode: recursively search directories for movie files.
Run at lower priority (nice 10 on Linux, idle on Windows) by default. To run at normal priority use -n option.
Thumbnails are group together in one jpeg file and can be saved individually too (-I option).
Work fine with Unicode filenames in both Linux & Windows (might need to change the font with -f fontfile).
Blank screen detection & evasion: so instead of getting blank shots:
,
we can get (with -b 0.6 option):
Edge detection & blur evasion: so instead of getting blur (no edge) shots:
,
we can get (with -D6 option): (not perfect yet)

(trailers taken from yahoo, pocketmovies, gamershell )
Update mode: (-W option) omits files that already have thumbnails
Save file info (name, size, length, codecs) to a text file (-N option)
Seek and non-seek mode: automatically selected and can be overridden. (-z and -Z option) Seek mode is much faster while non-seek mode is good for small time step or small clips. *new*
These file formats should be supported: .3gp, .3g2, .asf, .avi, .dat, .divx, .dsm, .evo, .flv, .m1v, .m2ts, .m2v, .m4a, .mj2, .mjpg, .mjpeg, .mkv, .mov, .moov, .mp4, .mpg, .mpeg, .mpv, .nut, .ogg, .ogm, .qt, .swf, .ts, .vob, .wmv, .xvid. I haven't tried them all though. :)

Download & Installation

Current version: 200808a. What's news? See changelog.txt. For older releases, please visit download page.

Linux & Others
- mtn source code. You'll need FFmpeg's libraries (libavcodec libavformat libavutil libswscale) and GD library. Most distributions should have libgd but some dont have libswscale, so you might need to compile FFmpeg and enable libswscale.
- mtn Linux i386 binary: statically linked (include everything), or dynamically linked (you need to have the required libraries installed by other means)
- Unicode TrueType font (optional): Bitstream Cyberbit -- has 29,934 glyphs
Windows:
- mtn Windows binary & dll files & source code -- all in one package; get this one if you dont know which one to download :)
- separate packages-- can be upgraded independently.
- - mtn Windows binary & source code
  - FFmpeg library dll: you can either use
    - unofficial build at arrozcru (r13721 or newer) -- unicode filenames not supported,
    - or my smaller & newer build (r14005) which only has features that mtn needs (i.e. no encoding & muxing) plus some patches. The source code can be obtained by: svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
  - GD library dll -- not yet upgradeable; please use this version
  - put the dll files in the same directory as mtn.exe (not in bin nor dll sub-directory)
- GUI
- - Movie 'Batch' Thumbnailer FrontEnd: version 0.1 developed by illuminati -- super cool!! :), or
  - Movie Thumbnailer Front-End & source code: version 0.44 developed by illuminati -- also super cool!! :)
  - put or unzip the GUI in the same directory as mtn.exe
- Unicode TrueType font (optional): Bitstream Cyberbit -- has 29,934 glyphs

Usage:

mtn is a command-line program so its usage will mostly be done in a shell or command prompt. It has many options, the more frequently used ones are:

-w width : width of output image
If you want the thumbnails to have 3 columns and 10 rows, use: -c 3 -r 10
Or if you want to have 5 columns and have a shot every 65 seconds, use: -c 5 -s 65
-r rows will override -s seconds if used together
If not overridden, the defaults are used: -w 1024 -c 3 -s 120
In Windows, you can run mtn.exe from command prompt or drag files/dirs from Windows explorer and drop them on mtn.exe. You can change the default options by creating a shortcut to mtn.exe and add options there (right click the shortcut -> Properties -> Target); then drop files/dirs on the shortcut instead.
In Linux & others, you'll probably need to change the TrueType font path (-f fontfile). The default is set to tahomabd.ttf which might not exist in non-Windows systems. If you dont have a TrueType font, you can turn the text off by using -i -t.
Files which have Unicode names, e.g. in Thai Chinese Japanese Korean Greek, do work fine with mtn in both Linux and Windows (as of version 0.61). You need to tell which TrueType font to use though (-f fontfile). ARIALUNI.TTF and Cyberbit.ttf seem like good ones.

For more information, see detailed usage.

Support & Contact:

mtn is developed by tuit (tuitfun); though most of its magic is done by FFmpeg libraries. For support & contact, please use one of the forums.

Special Thanks:

Seeders & Trackers: without all those movies, there would be no need for thumbnails. :)
FFmpeg: super fast & wonderful media libraries/players/converters
GD: easy to use image library; great documents & examples!
FFmpeg Windows Help: building FFmpeg on Windows tutorials & unofficial builds
An ffmpeg and SDL Tutorial
SourceForge.net

Help needed:

My programming skill is very rusty and i am new to libavcodec, so if you can help, please do! :)
For bugs & future plans, please see todo.txt and the source code.
I cannot do GUI, if you can help please let me know.