---
author: einar
comments: true
date: 2011-04-10 12:40:26+00:00
layout: post
slug: taking-video-snapshots-quickly-kde-vlc-snapper
title: 'Taking video snapshots quickly: KDE VLC Snapper'
wordpress_id: 823
categories:
- Anime
- KDE
- Linux
tags:
- Anime
- KDE
- Linux
- python
- vlc
---

Some of the oldest readers of this blog are well aware of [a certain hobby of mine](http://www.dennogumi.org/category/anime). Over the years I've always wanted to write more about that, including the stuff I'm viewing nowadays, but I found a hassle to collect snapshots from videos / DVDs, selecting them, and so on.

Recently I learnt that VLC has [some rather complete Python bindings](http://wiki.videolan.org/Python_bindings), and I thought, _why not make the process automated?_ Yesterday I had some free time on my hands and a quick session of hacking brought some results already.

As the stuff is somewhat past prototypal stage, I thought I would push somewhere for others to use.  Lo and behold, here I present you _KDE VLC Snapper_.

  


![](http://www.dennogumi.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/vlcsnapper_resized.png)

As you can see, it's a minimal dialog: just select your source video file (any file supported by VLC will do), the number of screencaps, the destination directory, and the program will do the rest. Currently it works _somewhat_ OK (see caveats below) and is good enough for my use cases.

## How do I get it?

Just clone this repository: {% highlight bash %}git clone http://git.gitorious.org/kde-vlc-snapper/kde-vlc-snapper.git{% endhighlight %} followed by {% highlight bash %}sudo python setup.py install{% endhighlight %} You can then invoke the program with {% highlight bash %}kdevlcsnapper{% endhighlight %}

  


**Requirements** include PyKDE4 (tested on KDE Dev Platform 4.6), numpy (just for its "linspace" function, alternatives are welcome) and VLC installed (you don't need the bindings, however: I provide a local copy).

What about **bugs**? Well, currently there are two issues that I'm unsure on how to fix: the first is a crash on exit, the second is that certain media files make VLC crash in the background when called from the bindings.

In any case, if you try it out, let me know what you think in the comments!
