Category: Nerd Central

How to Extract Image Frames from a Video Using VLC Media Player (The Easy Way!)

How to Extract Image Frames from a Video Using VLC Media Player (The Easy Way!)

by Engineered Mama ♥ 7 Comments

If you need to extract image frames from a video file, here is an easy (and free!) way to do just that.

**Note: You must run VLC Media Player as Administrator for this to work**

If you don’t have VLC Media Player, download the latest version here.  Open VLC Media Player and open the video file that you wish to extract image frames from.  Open Tool Preferences.

vlc tool preferences

Under Video (top icon), select Show All Settings (it will default to simple settings only).

video preferences

Expand the Video Filters section and select “Scene filter” (Video⇒Filters⇒Scene filter).

Scene filter

Fill in all of the specifics for your purposes and the location you wish the image files to save to.  Head back to the main VLC Player interface, play the video, and voila!  Your image files will be saved to the designated file location.

So the Windows Update Killed Your Python Environment…

So the Windows Update Killed Your Python Environment…

by Engineered Mama ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Yeah.  Me too.  Seriously… Bill Gates can shove it.  I am a die-hard Apple fan to the core (ha!  See what I did there??? To the core!).  Why?  Because they WORK.  I am by no means the most tech savvy person, but I’m also not a 95 year old grandmother trying to use Tik Tok.  My Apple products don’t get bugs, updates don’t crash every application or development environment I have, and they just. work.  Seriously.

Coding algorithms and mathematical computations are totally my thing and I don’t like wasting my time trying to set up an environment, so this really ticked me off after installing updates I really didn’t want to install in the first place.  Updates installed, then BAM…

python command prompt

Steve Jobs never would’ve done this to me… just sayin’.  Ok, so it won’t activate.  I uninstalled and reinstalled this newest version of Python and still… no dice.

Here’s how I was able to actually open Python from the Anaconda Navigator because… guess what?  The Anaconda Navigator wouldn’t open either.  Fun times, people… fun times.

Find the folder that your Anaconda Navigator is located in by doing a search in the Start Menu.

Anaconda Navigator Location

Open the file location and locate the Scripts folder.  Run the Navigator executable in the Scripts folder (anaconda-navigator.exe).

scripts file location

This should bring up the Anaconda Navigator interface so you can open Spyder and be on your way back to Python.  If you prefer to skip the navigator altogether and jump straight to Sypder, run the Spyder executable (spyder.exe) and you’ll be good to go.

Anaconda navigator

Until… OpenCV now shows that it isn’t installed.  Really… REALLY?!  Guys… this was JUST working yesterday just fine.  I just want to run my code and be on my way, but nooooooooo.  Of course not.

No cv2 module

Ok.  Next troubleshooting steps… How do I make sure it’s mapping to OpenCV?  It’s there… I promise!  For some reason it doesn’t map to the correct location (I promise OpenCV WAS installed prior to this Windows update debacle…).  To make sure the module is in the correct location, run a simple OpenCV install in the command prompt and you should be good to go:

pip install opencv-python

Drop me a line below if you find a better, more elegant way than opening the Anaconda executable… it’s a pain!  Happy coding, everyone!