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Automatically create preview thumbnails from video files at specific timestamps or intervals.

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Problem

You have video files that need preview thumbnails for galleries, search results, or video players. Manually extracting frames doesn’t scale.

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Solution

What’s in this recipe:
  • Extract thumbnail at a specific timestamp
  • Generate multiple thumbnails per video
  • Resize thumbnails to standard dimensions
You add computed columns that extract frames from videos. Thumbnails are generated automatically when you insert new videos.

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Setup

%pip install -qU pixeltable

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Load videos

import pixeltable as pxt
import pixeltable.functions as pxtf

# Create a fresh directory
pxt.drop_dir('thumbnail_demo', force=True)
pxt.create_dir('thumbnail_demo')

Connected to Pixeltable database at: postgresql+psycopg://postgres:@/pixeltable?host=/Users/pjlb/.pixeltable/pgdata
Created directory ‘thumbnail_demo’.
<pixeltable.catalog.dir.Dir at 0x14d3a1990>
# Create table for videos
videos = pxt.create_table('thumbnail_demo/videos', {'video': pxt.Video})

Created table ‘videos’.
# Insert sample videos from public S3 bucket
s3_prefix = 's3://multimedia-commons/'
video_paths = [
    'data/videos/mp4/ffe/ffb/ffeffbef41bbc269810b2a1a888de.mp4',
    'data/videos/mp4/ffe/feb/ffefebb41485539f964760e6115fbc44.mp4',
]

videos.insert([{'video': s3_prefix + path} for path in video_paths])

Inserting rows into `videos`: 2 rows [00:00, 382.20 rows/s]
Inserted 2 rows with 0 errors.
2 rows inserted, 4 values computed.
# View videos
videos.collect()

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Extract thumbnail at timestamp

Extract a single frame at a specific time (e.g., 1 second into the video): 
# Extract frame at 1 second as thumbnail
videos.add_computed_column(
    thumbnail=pxtf.video.extract_frame(videos.video, timestamp=1.0)
)

Added 2 column values with 0 errors.
2 rows updated, 2 values computed.
# View thumbnails
videos.select(videos.video, videos.thumbnail).collect()

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Resize thumbnails

Create standard-sized thumbnails for consistent display: 
# Resize thumbnail to 320x180 (16:9 aspect ratio)
videos.add_computed_column(
    thumbnail_small=videos.thumbnail.resize((320, 180))
)

Added 2 column values with 0 errors.
2 rows updated, 2 values computed.
# View resized thumbnails with dimensions
videos.select(
    videos.thumbnail_small,
    videos.thumbnail_small.width,
    videos.thumbnail_small.height,
).collect()

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Multiple thumbnails with frame_iterator

For preview strips or timeline thumbnails, use frame_iterator to extract multiple frames: 
# Create a view with frames extracted at 0.5 fps (one frame every 2 seconds)
frames = pxt.create_view(
    'thumbnail_demo/frames',
    videos,
    iterator=pxtf.video.frame_iterator(videos.video, fps=0.5),
)

Inserting rows into `frames`: 17 rows [00:00, 9736.88 rows/s]
# View extracted frames (multiple per video)
frames.select(frames.frame, frames.pos).head(10)

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Explanation

Thumbnail extraction methods:
Common thumbnail sizes:

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See also

Last modified on May 1, 2026