Getting a thumbnail from a video url or data in iP

Question

I am trying to acquire a thumbnail (of the first frame) from a video taken from iphone 3GS camera so i can display it. Anyone been successful at doing this? If so, how to do?

Answer 1

Maybe this is useful for someone else who faces the same problem. I needed an easy solution for creating a thumbnail for Images, PDFs and Videos. To solve that problem I've created the following Library.

https://github.com/prine/ROThumbnailGenerator

The usage is very straightforward: var thumbnailImage = ROThumbnail.getThumbnail(url)

It has internally three different implementations and depending on the file extension it does create the thumbnail. You can easily add your own implementation if you need a thumbnail creator for another file extension.

Answer 2

Best method I've found... MPMoviePlayerController thumbnailImageAtTime:timeOption

Answer 3

SWIFT 2.0

You can generate in swift in two ways 1. AVFoundation 2. MPMoviePlayerController

1. 

    func generateThumnail(url : NSURL) -> UIImage{
            var asset : AVAsset = AVAsset.assetWithURL(url) as AVAsset
            var assetImgGenerate : AVAssetImageGenerator = AVAssetImageGenerator(asset: asset)
            assetImgGenerate.appliesPreferredTrackTransform = true
            var error       : NSError? = nil
            var time        : CMTime = CMTimeMake(1, 30)
            var img         : CGImageRef = assetImgGenerate.copyCGImageAtTime(time, actualTime: nil, error: &error)
            var frameImg    : UIImage = UIImage(CGImage: img)!

            return frameImg
        }

2. 

    override func viewDidLoad() {
            super.viewDidLoad()
            var moviePlayer         : MPMoviePlayerController!  = MPMoviePlayerController(contentURL: moviePlayManager.movieURL)
            moviePlayer.view.frame   = CGRect(x: self.view.frame.origin.x, y: self.view.frame.origin.y, width:
                                       self.view.frame.size.width, height: self.view.frame.height)
            moviePlayer.fullscreen   = true
            moviePlayer.controlStyle = MPMovieControlStyle.None
            NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self,
        selector: "videoThumbnailIsAvailable:",
        name: MPMoviePlayerThumbnailImageRequestDidFinishNotification,
        object: nil)


        let thumbnailTimes = 3.0
        moviePlayer.requestThumbnailImagesAtTimes([thumbnailTimes],
                timeOption: .NearestKeyFrame)
        }

    func videoThumbnailIsAvailable(notification: NSNotification){

        if let player = moviePlayer{
            let thumbnail =
            notification.userInfo![MPMoviePlayerThumbnailImageKey] as? UIImage

            if let image = thumbnail{

                /* We got the thumbnail image. You can now use it here */
                println("Thumbnail image = \(image)")
            }
        }

Answer 4

Swift 2 code:

func previewImageForLocalVideo(url:NSURL) -> UIImage?
{
    let asset = AVAsset(URL: url)
    let imageGenerator = AVAssetImageGenerator(asset: asset)
    imageGenerator.appliesPreferredTrackTransform = true

    var time = asset.duration
    //If possible - take not the first frame (it could be completely black or white on camara's videos)
    time.value = min(time.value, 2)

    do {
        let imageRef = try imageGenerator.copyCGImageAtTime(time, actualTime: nil)
        return UIImage(CGImage: imageRef)
    }
    catch let error as NSError
    {
        print("Image generation failed with error \(error)")
        return nil
    }
}