Thumbnail Me – An Easy Way To Generate Thumbnails From Videos

Have you ever attempted to take a screenshot of a video? If you’ve ever wanted to show someone the quality of a video (without actually sending them the entire video) or create an Internet meme from a still image in a movie, screenshots can be useful. However, they can be quite difficult to take at times, as traditional methods tend to not always work. Sure, you can use a screenshot program to do the trick, or even VLC player’s built-in option, but if you’re looking to take multiple screenshots this can be tedious. Isn’t there a simpler way to automate the process?

Thumbnail Me offers a solution for those of us who would like to have the ability to automate this process. With this application, you can create thumbnails of different frames within a video file quickly and easily.

What Is Thumbnail Me?

Thumbnail me is a free and open source thumbnail generator. It’s cross-platform (Windows XP/Vista/7 and Linux, but not Mac…sorry!) and it creates images of videos and provides the option to upload them to ImageShack. Thumbnail Me is coded in C++ and uses the Qt 4.7 library which is why it is capable of running on both Windows and Linux based operating systems.

Thumbnail me also works with a wide range of video types, including AVI, MKV, TS, M2TS, MPEG, MPG, Mp4, VOB, WMV, OGG, 3GP, MOV, FLV, and SWF.

How Do I Use Thumbnail Me?

If you’re ready to get started with Thumbnail Me, the first thing you’re going to want to do is head over to the website and download the application.

Once you install and run the app, you can begin by selecting a source, output folder, etc. Then enter a title and any other information you would like to be included with your file(s).

You can also select an image format for your thumbnail generation. Available formats include JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF. Optionally, you can log in with your ImageShack account for uploading the generated thumbnail images to the service as well.

Thumbnail Me also gives you the option to preview the potential thumbnail image before generating it. When you’re ready to proceed, just click the Launch button. Your video screens will be created instantly.

Conclusion

When taking screenshots of videos the most common use that comes to mind (at least as far as I’m concerned) is torrents. When seeking out a torrent of a video or movie (one that’s being shared legally of course!), it helps to be able to view screen captures of the footage before committing to download it, as these types of files tend to be rather large and can take a long time to download. It’s also a good way to tell if you are downloading the right file, especially if you’re having difficulty remembering the title.

Thumbnail Me is a pretty versatile application that supports a number of different parameters. If you are ever in need of a video screenshot application, Thumbnail Me is a tool that is more than capable in suiting your needs.

Let us know in the comments what you think of it. Or maybe you know of a better alternative?

Thumbnail Me – An Easy Way To Generate Thumbnails From Videos is a post from: MakeUseOf