Use case	Videos	Need
Video platform	10K videos	Preview thumbnails
Media library	5K clips	Gallery previews
Content management	1K uploads	Automated thumbnails

thumbnail_small	width	height
	320	180
	320	180

frame	pos
	0
	1
	2
	3
	4
	5
	6
	7
	8
	9

Method	Use case
`extract_frame(timestamp)`	Single thumbnail at specific time
`frame_iterator(fps=t)`	Multiple frames at regular intervals
`frame_iterator(num_frames=n)`	Fixed number of evenly-spaced frames

Size	Use case
120x90	Small previews, lists
320x180	Medium thumbnails, cards
640x360	Large previews, hover states
1280x720	HD thumbnails, hero images

## 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. ### Setup ```python theme={null} %pip install -qU pixeltable ``` ```python theme={null} import pixeltable as pxt import pixeltable.functions as pxtf ``` ### Load videos ```python theme={null} # 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'.
  \

```python theme={null} # Create table for videos videos = pxt.create_table('thumbnail_demo/videos', {'video': pxt.Video}) ```

  Created table 'videos'.

```python theme={null} # 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.

```python theme={null} # View videos videos.collect() ```

### Extract thumbnail at timestamp Extract a single frame at a specific time (e.g., 1 second into the video): ```python theme={null} # 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.

```python theme={null} # View thumbnails videos.select(videos.video, videos.thumbnail).collect() ```

### Resize thumbnails Create standard-sized thumbnails for consistent display: ```python theme={null} # 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.

```python theme={null} # View resized thumbnails with dimensions videos.select( videos.thumbnail_small, videos.thumbnail_small.width, videos.thumbnail_small.height, ).collect() ```

### Multiple thumbnails with `frame_iterator` For preview strips or timeline thumbnails, use `frame_iterator` to extract multiple frames: ```python theme={null} # 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]

```python theme={null} # View extracted frames (multiple per video) frames.select(frames.frame, frames.pos).head(10) ```

## Explanation **Thumbnail extraction methods:**

**Common thumbnail sizes:**

## See also * [Extract frames from videos](/howto/cookbooks/video/video-extract-frames) - Detailed frame extraction guide * [Load media from S3](/howto/cookbooks/data/data-import-s3) - Import videos from cloud storage * [Transform images with PIL](/howto/cookbooks/images/img-pil-transforms) - Resize and crop images Built with [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com).