This is a simple module meant to generate a "video thumbnail", one of those you see on Youtube when you hover your mouse over a related video.

This module creates a preview video, consisting of three subclips à 3 seconds from the original clip. This makes sure that every "important" part has a good chance of being represented. If the input video is short, the preview will contain fewer subclips.

It uses FFmpeg and some error handling. Returns a promise.

Below is a generated, 15 seconds long video-thumbnail of the Bick Buck Bunny movie.

var thumb = require('video-thumbnail')
thumb.video(input, output, options)
//Where options is an object with the optional entries width and height

If you want to make only one of these clips, it's exposed in the clip function.

thumb.clip(input, output, start, duration, options)
//where start and duration are integers

As .clip is lower level than .video, it uses no error handling for input/output files.

Example:

//null indicates automatic output filename, silent disables a disclaimer about this behaviour
thumb.video('input.mp4', null, {width: 200, silent:true}).then(()=>{
    console.log('Done!')
}).catch((err)=>{
    console.log(err)
})

(async function(){
    await thumb.clip('input.mp4', 'output.mp4', {width: 150})
    console.log('Done!')
})()

If only one of width/height is given, the aspect ratio of the input is used to calculate the other dimension. If both are left out, it defaults to {width: 300}.

Install with npm i -g video-thumbnail Now, you can use video-thumbnail in.mp4 out.mp4, along with the optional --width and --height arguments. Outputs to in-preview.mp4 if output is omitted.

FFmpeg

MIT