Extract Images From A Video On Windows 11

Ever wanted to save a moment from a video as a high-quality image on your Windows 11 PC?

Whether it’s for a project, a presentation, or just to keep a memory, capturing still frames from a video is easier than you think!

In this article, we’ll show you four easy methods to extract images from any video using tools like the Snipping Tool, VLC Media Player, FFmpeg, and Shotcut.

No advanced skills needed — just follow along, and you’ll be saving those perfect video frames in no time.

How to Extract Images From A Video On Windows 11

Table of Contents

Follow these step-by-step guides to extract images from a video on Windows 11.

1. Extract Images From a Video Using the Snipping Tool

The Snipping Tool is a built-in Windows utility that allows you to capture screenshots of specific areas on your screen with ease.

First, we will try this method to extract images from a video.

Here’s what to do:

Open the video using any media player, such as the built-in Media Player app.

Pause the video at the frame you want to capture. You can press the spacebar key to pause the video.
Open the Snipping Tool using Windows search. You can also press Windows + Shift + S.
Click on the New option.

Now, drag to select the video frame area and your screenshot will be taken. Now go to the location where the screenshot is saved.
To edit the screenshot, select the image and you can choose Edit in Paint. If you want to save the image, you can save it by pressing Ctrl + S.

You can also choose to save the image, by clicking on the Save As option.
Click on the “File Name” field and type a name for the image.
Then click the “Save as Type” drop-down menu and choose the desired image format.

You can select the PNG format for a good-quality image. Then, click on the “Save” Option and your image will be saved.

2. Extract Images From a Video Using VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a powerful and versatile tool that not only plays videos but also allows you to easily capture still images from videos. Here’s how you can extract images from a video using VLC.

To extract images from a video using the VLC Media Player, first make sure you have the app downloaded and installed on your system.

Now, right-click the video, choose Open With option and select VLC Media Player.
Play the video and pause at the frame you want to capture.
For precise frame selection, press E on your keyboard to advance one frame at a time.

To take a snapshot, press Shift + S.

Or, you can go to the menu bar and choose Video then select Take Snapshot. As soon as you take the screenshot, you will see that the path where the screenshot is saved – appears.

Now follow the path and find the saved image in your Pictures folder. Now, you can edit and save it as we have shown in the previous method.

If the extracted image blurry or of poor quality, then you can tweak two options in VLC before taking the screenshots.
First, in VLC, head into Tools then select Preferences.

Open the “Input/Codecs” tab. Then click the “Hardware-Accelerated Decoding” drop-down menu,and choose “Disable.”
Next, access the “Video” tab, click the “Output” drop-down menu, and select “OpenGL Video Output.” Then, choose “Save” and take your snapshot.

If you have issues with VLC media player then follow this guide to do this.

3. Use FFmpeg for Bulk Frame Extraction

FFmpeg is a powerful, open-source multimedia framework that allows you to convert, stream, and manipulate audio and video files. To use the tool to extract screenshots from a video, download FFmpeg from the official site and extract it to your C: drive.

Adjust your system’s environment variables for FFmpeg if required.

To do so, click the Start button, then type “environment properties” into the search bar and hit Enter.
In the System Properties window, click “Environment Variables.”

Click on the variable you want to change then click on “Edit.”
Many environment variables will simply take a name and value, like “Number of processors.” All you have to do to edit them is to change the value and click on the “OK” button. You should change the environment variables so that the ffmpeg command works from any folder in the Command Prompt window.
Now, type cmd in the Windows search and choose to run it as an administrator.

Type this command with the exact path for the video you want to take screenshot from. Then press Enter.

cd "PATH_TO_VIDEO_FOLDER"

To extract all frames as images, use:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 frame_%04d.png

To extract one frame per second, use:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf fps=1 frame_%04d.png

To extract a frame at a specific time, you can use:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -ss 00:00:05 -vframes 1 output.png

FFmpeg should save the extracted images in the same folder as the video file and you can find it from there.

4. Extract Images From a Video Using Shotcut

Shotcut is a free, open-source video editing software that allows you to edit, trim, and extract frames from videos with ease.

To extract images from a video using Shotcut, first download and install Shotcut.
Launch Shotcut and open your video by selecting Open File.

Pause at the frame you want to capture. For precise navigation, use your arrow keys.
Once you found the frame you want to capture, go to File then select Export then Frame or press Ctrl + Shift + E.
Choose the folder, name the file, and select the format. Save the image.