Scene video filter outputting some empty frames

[Eon]

I reproduced the issue in VLC v2.1.0 on Windows (8.0) and v2.0.9 (EDIT: and v2.1.1) on Mac (10.9 Maverics).

I am referring to the filter/output module called "Scene filter" that outputs frames from a video as images to a specified folder/directory.

When I use it on a .mov file (720p @ 30fps, recorded on my iPhone) and I want to extract the frames with a recording ratio of 1 (I want to output every single frame), I only get about 15 or so good ones, then the output png files seem to be sporadically empty (0 bytes). I've tested this on fairly fast PCs.

Is there a way to let it know to forget about frame rate and take as much time as it needs to do it reliably? Even with dummy video output selected (nothing gets displayed) the problem persists. If anyone with some expertise knows it to be an unlikely thing to reasonably be achievable, then please let me know. I am considering some other software tools but I like the simplicity of being able to use VLC.

I'm using the GUI to configure the output with Tools->Preferences (VLC->Preferences... on Mac), then selecting Show Settings: All and then configuring it under Video/Filters/Scene filter and switching on this filter under Video/Filters. I've also tried with the following two options under Video unchecked: "Drop late frames" and "Skip frames" but still I get a significant percentage of empty images in the output.

Also, during display when outputting the video sometimes gets a bit garbled on certain sections (looks like typical mpeg errors) and the garbledness is also reflected in some of the non-zero size frames - the ones that actually wrote a picture to disk.

Any help would be appreciated

[Kibsgaard]

Came here because I had the same problem.

I got the best result by setting the scene filter output format to tiff and the video output format to "Windows GDI video output".
It still drops frame 2-6 and sometimes the last one, but everything else looks to be fine. Did it on 4 different clips and seems to be consistent. Luckily I don't care for the first and last frames as it is just "camera rolling. Action" and "Cut". Would still be nice to know how to do it perfectly tho.

The "dummy" output format doesn't seem to work - it is changed to "statistics" when I open the preferences again. Is this also happening for you?

Windows 8, VLC 2.1.1, SSD

BR
Kibs

PS.: Any suggestion for software that is meant for this QuickTime movie to image sequence conversion? Seems that QuickTime isn't supported by a lot of software

[Glitch]

I'm also having this issue; I was dropping most of the frames (mostly saved as empty frames, although some were also corrupted (green or blocky)) until I tried Kibsgaard's suggestions. Now mostly I can save them successfully, but I always seem to drop the third frame and the penultimate frame of whatever video I convert into images, which is frustrating...

Config: Win7HP/64/SP1(fully patched), Core i7 2600, 6GB RAM, GeForce 550GTX Ti, Samsung 840 series SSD (240GB) boot/system. Latest release build of VLC Media Player, 2.1.2 Rincewind.

[kRyszard]

Reproduced on 2.1.5 x64, win7. However sometimes vlc actually produces frames 2-6 so my solution is to use the extractor with params

Code: Select all

--start-time=0 --stop-time=1

in a loop and wait for correct frames. After that extract frames from the full video and replace missing frames (unless they are present).