Whatever the reason, ImageGrab is way more comfortable than the manual way of pressing PrintScreen on the keyboard, and processing the image in an image editor.

ImageGrab requires that Haali Media Splitter, or ffdshow are installed on the system before the program can be used. The software reminds the user after installation if that is not the case.

Videos are then loaded by drag and drop, or by using the file menu. The beta version had a few problems with that, as it was sometimes possible to load videos without problems, only to find out that the same videos could not be loaded at a later time with the two codecs not installed. This problem should go away if the codecs are installed.

Videos that have been loaded can be played, and the usual playback controls are offered. It is furthermore possible to jump right to a specific position in the video.

imagegrab

Images can be grabbed by left-clicking on the video or pressing F12. A smaller thumbnail of the image appears and the image gets saved on the local system. Ctrl-C will copy the snapshot to the clipboard instead, from where it can be processed further.

ImageGrab definitely has its uses, the beta version however is not completely stable yet, and most of the interface is in French, which makes it harder for users who do not speak French.

The program offers a few features that applications like VLC do not offer. This features include taking automated screenshots, and extensive command line options to grab images without user interface.

It is up to the user to decided if its worth the troubles of installing another application.

ImageGrab is available for download at the developer’s website. Both the stable version 4, and the beta of version 5 are offered. We suggest to stick with the stable version for now, until the beta quirks are sorted out.

Users who need several thumbnail images instead can take a look at Auto Movie Thumbnailer, Thumber or Image Grabber.

Programs like Auto Movie Thumbnailer automate the creation of video thumbnails as much as possible. The free software program offers lots of features to customize the thumbnail generation.

Users who want quick results can keep the standard settings to speed up the process. It takes only three steps to create thumbnails of videos stored on a local or network drive.

It starts with the selection of one or multiple directories containing video files, continues

It begins by selecting a directory that contains the movies, continues with the the output directory and ends with a click on the start processing button to process all videos in the selected folders.

movie thumbs

The processing time depends largely on the amount of videos stored in the selected directories, their length and the computer’s processing powers.

The preview window displays scenes from each video, the log the outputs. Auto Movie Thumbnailer makes use of Mplayer to create the thumbnails.

One oft he biggest strengths of the program is its customizability. It is for instance possible to configure the number of thumbnails based on a video’s file size, the supported video types, color and design settings of the thumbnail image or Mplayer command line arguments to fine tune the output.

movie thumbnails

A single video thumbnail image looks like this:

movie thumbnail example

The only difficulty that some users may experience is that it is not possible to select a single file for thumbnail creation. The best way to create thumbs for one movie is to create a new directory, move the video file into that dir to process it afterwards in the program.

Auto Movie Thumbnailer provides all the necessary options to create thumbnails from a video collection. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

This can be checked easily by trying to play the video with Windows Media Player or any other media player that does not use binary codecs. Five output sets are available that define all sorts of parameters like the number of thumbnails per row, the background color and the width and / or height of the thumbnails.

Everything in there can be changed and there is much to explore including several options that I have not mentioned.

Several videos can be added to the program queue by either selecting a folder or files from the system. Two output settings exist. The first creates an image for every thumbnail while the second combines all thumbnails into an image.

The creation process itself is fast and works flawlessly as long as a supported codec is installed. I ran into a bit of problems with several video files because I use SMPlayer as my main video player which uses binary codecs that other applications cannot use. This meant that I received quite a few “failed” messages because of missing codecs.

Installing the codec would naturally resolve the problem.