Processing YouTube video in ffmpeg

Question

I'm using ffmpeg for taking screenshots from video. Is it possible to take screenshots from YouTube video without downloading video to hard drive?

Solution

ffmpeg used to have support for libquvi that would allow to download video directly. Since it does not support the library anymore, to process a video from YouTube, you should download it using youtube-dl instead.

I am not aware of any live-processing capabilities.

Comments

[barlop]

doubt it, seems you want timed screenshots of a video as it streams, don't know how

[Matt]

@barlop Yes, you are right. I am looking for solution, but don't know too.

[Nicky Smits]

Hey, i found nothing on how to do it for windows. Would you possibly have any clue in which direction i should be looking? And does this method still work for youtube?

[slhck]

I honestly don't know, perhaps you should ask the quvi developers for hints! The method should still work for YouTube.

[Nicky Smits]

I found something else. Youtube-dl.exe and it works like a charm. I can download the files and compile them with ffmpeg afterwards

[slhck]

Yes, that's the usual way of accessing YouTube videos. quvi is just if you don't want to create intermediate files, which sometimes helps saving space (and time, of course).

[Ivan Kolesnikov]

@slhck Hi, In the new ffmpeg-3.3 version. I got the following error: Unknown option "--enable-libquvi". Didn't found in the ./configure help something like "libquvi". Do you know another configuration flag for libquvi support or it's not supported in newer ffmpeg?

[slhck]

@IvanKolesnikov Yes, ffmpeg 3 removes libquvi support. I'll add a warning to this answer.