Since I’ve seen nothing which addresses the processing delays that I noticed in ffmpeg when generating thumbnail images, I figured I should share some important optimizations. I used to specify this command line when generating the images from a movie source (f4v in this case):

ffmpeg -y -i mymovie.f4v -an -ss 00:05:00 -t 00:00:00.01 -sameq -r 1 -vframes 1 -deinterlace -f mjpeg mythumbnail.jpg

This will take about one minute to generate the image of the video frame which is five seconds into the clip. This seems really extreme and is even worse when you try to increase the start location; for instance 45 seconds in, takes about an hour.
So, I knew there had to be a better way and I monkeyed around with the options:

ffmpeg -y -ss 00:05:00 -i mymovie.f4v -an -t 00:00:00.01 -sameq -r 1 -vframes 1 -deinterlace -f mjpeg mythumbnail.jpg

There is only one change between these lines, the placement of the “ss” option. This change causes the command to complete in less than a second, no matter what our start time is. Quite an increase in processing for something so simple! I hope this helps a few of you out there.

I could have said one reason I hate the iPhone, but it is an awesome work of engineering and a fine gadget. So to get on with it… I hate them because of their draconian lock on the addition of applications / features. Its not about stability, its about greed; so stop lying Apple. I could rant for about an hour on this and other messed up things Apple does but I’ll save it, since greed has little chance of going away. I’m posting this due to two articles I read this morning:

The bad: Why Apple Won’t Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone

The good: Adobe Flash 10 running on Android G1 Google Phone

Needless to say, but I purchased a G1.