Generate Video Thumbnail
Pick a timestamp, get one high-quality frame back. Useful for poster images, OG cards, or anywhere a video preview belongs.
Generate a thumbnail
JPG for OG cards, PNG for transparency, WebP for the best quality-to-size.
Sign in to run this tool — 100 free credits on signup.
FFmpeg flags used by this tool
Quick reference for what each parameter actually does.
- -ss
- Seek to the timestamp before reading. Placed before -i it's a fast input seek (snaps to nearest keyframe), which is exactly what we want for a single thumbnail.
- -frames:v 1
- Read exactly one frame, then stop. Without this FFmpeg would happily encode the whole rest of the video.
- -q:v 2
- Quality setting for MJPEG (JPG output), scale 1-31 where lower is better. 2 is near-visually-lossless.
How it works
- 01
Upload or paste a URL
Drop a video from your computer, or paste a public URL. Up to 5 GB.
- 02
Pick a timestamp
HH:MM:SS or raw seconds — both work. Defaults to 1 second in to skip black intro frames.
- 03
Choose a format
JPG for OG cards or thumbnails. PNG if you need transparency or pixel-exact accuracy. WebP for the best quality-to-size ratio.
- 04
Download the image
Temporary download link as soon as it's done. Usually a few hundred milliseconds.
FAQ
Why does my thumbnail land on a black or blurry frame?
Fast seek snaps to the nearest keyframe, which might not be exactly your timestamp. If you need frame-accurate, use the API and put -ss after -i (slower but exact).
Which format should I pick?
JPG for OG cards / OpenGraph (small and universal). PNG for graphics work or when transparency matters. WebP for modern web — same quality at half the size.
Can I generate multiple thumbnails at once?
Not from this UI — but the API supports -vf select=... to extract every Nth frame, or generate a sprite sheet. See the docs.
What resolution will the thumbnail be?
Same as the source video — we don't downscale. If you need a smaller thumbnail, run it through the Resize tool first or pipe the API call through scale=W:-1.
Does this work on private videos?
Only if your video link is accessible to the processor. Public links are easiest; private files usually need a temporary share link.
Is this free?
Sign up for 100 free credits. A thumbnail costs 1 credit. No subscription, top up as you go.
Related video tools
Need to grab thumbnails in code?
This tool is a wrapper around our REST API — three lines of curl will do the same job in your build pipeline or backend.
View API docscurl -X POST https://api.ffhub.io/v1/tasks \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d {
"command": "-ss 00:00:01 -i https://you.com/in.mp4 -frames:v 1 -q:v 2 output.jpg"
}