How to Take Automated Screenshots at Certain Intervals in VLC

We can configure VLC Media Player to automatically take screenshots at certain intervals for a video that is being played. Normally, snapshots can be captured in VLC by going to Video > Take Snapshot [Shift + S]. But it extracts only one frame. Suppose, you want to click a photo every 30 seconds, then there is another trick with VLC. You can easily take batch screenshots with the Scene video filter. A bit of calculation and changes in the advanced setting are necessary periodic screenshots. With the scene filter, we can’t exactly define time intervals but we can define frame intervals. So, as an example, we can set it as, “After every 200 frames of video, take a photo”.

The steps to take automated screenshots at certain intervals in VLC Media Player:

  1. Go to Tools > Preferences [CTRL + P].
  2. Click on All to show Advanced Preferences.
  3. Select Video from the left.
  4. Under Snapshot, browse and select folder to specify a Video snapshot directory. Advanced Preferences Video
  5. Next, expand and navigate to Video > Filters from the left.
  6. Check the ☑ Scene video filter. Checking on the Scene Filter
  7. Expand further, Video > Filters > Scene filter, and set the Recording ratio. Configuring Scene Filter
    Recording ratio is the frame interval after which an automatic screenshot is taken. For a 30 frame per second (fps) video, entering 300 as Recording ratio would take a screenshot every 10 seconds and 1500 would make it 50 seconds. To find out the fps of a movie, open a video and go to Tools > Codec information [Ctrl + J]. Note: For some entering the Directory path prefix to store the images in the target directory willbe required.
  8. Hit Save to keep your changes.
Now, if you open up a video and hit play, VLC will automatically take periodic screenshots for it. It will be saved in the video snapshot directly. By default, it is the pictures directory but you have set it as shown in the steps above. The settings will stick, meaning that it will take screenshots for any video that is played using the software. To disable it, go to Advanced Settings and disable the Scene filter from Video > Filters by unchecking it.

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