FFmpeg generate thumbnail from transport stream

[davidb]

In the IOS client I am writing I am providing the capability to generate 15 thumbnail images with one image for each 20 seconds from the current stop you are at. This is great when playing back a tv show with commercials. This lets you skip most or all of the commercials. I have this working but the server side thumbnail generation is slower than I would like. This is because I haven't been able to generate thumbnails directly on a .ts stream, I am having to convert them to mp4 first then generate the images. The following is what I am using and is working:
ffmpeg -i 1.ts -c:a copy -c:v copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc 1.mp4
and then I generate the thumbnail using:

ffmpeg -ss 1.73 -i 1.mp4 -qscale:v 16 -vframes 1 -s 265x148 1.jpg
This works but it takes longer. How do I generate a thumbnail image without first having to create a .mp4 file. Yes I have tried just giving it the .ts file with the -vframe 1 line but it doesn't produce the correct image.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by davidb

In the IOS client I am writing I am providing the capability to generate 15 thumbnail images with one image for each 20 seconds from the current stop you are at. This is great when playing back a tv show with commercials. This lets you skip most or all of the commercials. I have this working but the server side thumbnail generation is slower than I would like. This is because I haven't been able to generate thumbnails directly on a .ts stream, I am having to convert them to mp4 first then generate the images. The following is what I am using and is working:
ffmpeg -i 1.ts -c:a copy -c:v copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc 1.mp4
and then I generate the thumbnail using:

ffmpeg -ss 1.73 -i 1.mp4 -qscale:v 16 -vframes 1 -s 265x148 1.jpg
This works but it takes longer. How do I generate a thumbnail image without first having to create a .mp4 file. Yes I have tried just giving it the .ts file with the -vframe 1 line but it doesn't produce the correct image.

If this is a sagetv mediafie, you can use the sagetv API for this.

https://github.com/stuckless/sagetv-...mbAPI.java#L56

In Phoenix, this is what is used to create the thumbnail strip, and it relies on the underlying MediaFileAPI.GenerateThumbnail api.