Online Tool Store
Frame Extractor
Scrub a video and save any moment as a full-resolution PNG or JPG, one frame at a time or evenly spaced across the clip. Runs in your browser.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.
Any format your browser can play — MP4 and WebM are safest. Nothing is uploaded, and no converter is downloaded.
No video yet — choose one, scrub to a moment, and capture it.
How it works
- Choose a video. It plays locally — no upload, and nothing to install.
- Scrub to the moment you want, or use the step buttons to nudge frame by frame.
- Capture it as a full-resolution PNG or JPG, or extract a set of evenly spaced frames at once.
- Jump back to any captured moment, and download frames individually or all together.
Why this needs no converter library
Most browser video tools ship several megabytes of WebAssembly. Extracting a still does not need any of it, because the browser has already decoded the frame in order to show it to you:
seek to time → wait for the frame to paint → drawImage(video) → PNG or JPG
A canvas will accept a video element as a source directly, copying the decoded frame at its native dimensions. The capture is instant, the quality is exactly what the video holds, and nothing had to be downloaded to make it happen.
The honest cost is format support. Because it relies on the browser's own player, the file has to be one your browser can play — MP4 and WebM are safe, while MKV and AVI usually are not. A tool built on ffmpeg would read those, at the price of a multi-megabyte download every visitor pays for.
One subtlety in the implementation: setting a video's time does not paint the new frame immediately, so each capture
waits for the browser's seeked event before drawing. Skipping that wait is the classic bug in
frame-grabbing code — you get the previous frame, or a blank canvas, and it only shows up intermittently.
Where the evenly spaced samples land
For a contact sheet, sampling at the midpoint of each interval beats sampling at its edges:
time(i) = duration × (i + 0.5) ÷ count
Six frames from a 60-second clip therefore come from 5s, 15s, 25s, 35s, 45s, and 55s — evenly spread, but never at 0s or the final instant, where videos so often have a black frame, a fade, or a title card that tells you nothing about the content.
FAQ
Is my video uploaded anywhere?
No, and nothing is downloaded either. Your browser plays the file locally and each frame is copied off the video onto a canvas, so the whole thing happens on your device with no converter library involved.
Why is my video rejected?
Because frames are read from a normal video player, so the file has to be one your browser can play. MP4 with H.264 and WebM work essentially everywhere; MKV, AVI, and some MOV files often will not. Converting to MP4 first fixes it.
What resolution are the captured frames?
The full resolution of the video, not the size it appears on screen. A 4K clip in a small player still yields 3840×2160 stills, because the frame is copied from the video data rather than from the visible pixels.
Should I choose PNG or JPG?
PNG for anything you will edit, crop, or read text from — it is lossless, so no new artefacts are added on top of the compression the video already has. JPG when you need a smaller file and a slight softening does not matter.
How exact is "step forward"?
It nudges the position by the interval you choose, and the browser lands on the nearest frame it can decode. The 30fps and 24fps options approximate one frame, but true frame-accurate stepping is not something a video element guarantees — for that you need an editor.
What does "evenly spaced frames" give me?
A quick set of thumbnails across the whole clip — useful for a contact sheet, choosing a poster image, or seeing what is in a video you have not watched. The samples sit inside each interval rather than at the very start and end, since first and last frames are so often black or a fade.
How we compare
| Feature | Online Tool Store | Upload-based frame grabbers | VLC or a video editor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your footage never leaves your device | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Nothing to install or download | ✓ | No install, but an upload and a wait | ✗ |
| Full-resolution stills, not screen-sized | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Contact sheet of evenly spaced frames | ✓ | Sometimes | Possible, usually fiddly |
| Reads MKV, AVI, and unusual codecs | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Guaranteed frame-accurate stepping | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Best for pulling a thumbnail, a proof, or a screenshot out of footage you would rather not upload — instantly, at full resolution, with nothing to install. It leans on your browser's own player, so unusual formats need converting first, and precise frame-by-frame work belongs in an editor.