Currently I am using this command to extract the images:
ffmpeg.exe -i 10fps.h264 -r 10 -f image2 10fps.h264_%03d.jpeg
But how can I improve the JPEG image quality?
Currently I am using this command to extract the images:
ffmpeg.exe -i 10fps.h264 -r 10 -f image2 10fps.h264_%03d.jpeg
But how can I improve the JPEG image quality?
-qscale:v
Use -qscale:v
(or the alias -q:v
) as an output option. Effective range for JPEG is 2-31 with 31 being the worst quality. I recommend trying values of 2-5.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -qscale:v 2 output_%03d.jpg
ffmpeg -ss 60 -i input.mp4 -qscale:v 4 -frames:v 1 output.jpg
This will work with any video input. See below if your input is MJPEG.
If you input is MJPEG (Motion JPEG) then the images can be extracted without any quality loss.
The ffmpeg
or ffprobe
console output can tell you if your input is MJPEG:
$ ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=codec_name -of default=nw=1 input.avi
codec_name=mjpeg
Then you can extract the frames using the mjpeg2jpeg
bitstream filter:
$ ffmpeg -i input.avi -codec:v copy -bsf:v mjpeg2jpeg output_%03d.jpg
Output the images in a lossless format such as PNG:
ffmpeg.exe -i 10fps.h264 -r 10 -f image2 10fps.h264_%03d.png
Then use another program (where you can more precisely specify quality, subsampling and DCT method – e.g. GIMP) to convert the PNGs you want to JPEG.
It is possible to obtain slightly sharper images in JPEG format this way than is possible with -qmin 1 -q:v 1
and outputting as JPEG directly from ffmpeg
.