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A contact sheet shows a whole video at a glance: a grid of frames taken at even intervals, each labeled with its time. Pick the grid, width and style, and get a JPG or PNG sheet, plus individual thumbnails if you want them, captured straight from your browser.
Processing locally on your device
Overview
Contact sheets come from photography, where a roll of film was printed as small frames on one page. For video, the same idea gives editors, archivists and reviewers a fast overview: you can tell what's in a two-hour recording, find a scene, or prove that a file is the right version without scrubbing through it. The tool divides the video into as many equal slices as there are tiles and captures the frame at the middle of each slice, which also skips the black frames that often open and close a clip.
Frames are captured by the browser's own video decoder with a hidden player and a canvas, so there's no engine to download and the process starts right away. Each frame is seeked to, drawn into its tile and labeled. That also means the tool can only read formats your browser can play: MP4 with H.264 and WebM work everywhere, while some MKV, AVI or HEVC files may need converting first.
The layout is fully adjustable. Choose 1–10 columns and 1–12 rows (up to 120 frames), a sheet width of 1280, 1920, 2560 or 3840 pixels, the spacing between tiles, and a background color. A header can show the file name, resolution, duration, file size and frame interval, in a text color picked automatically for contrast with the background. Timestamps appear in the corner of each tile. The output size is shown before you generate.
Export as JPG (with a quality setting) for small, easily shared files, or PNG for lossless sharpness. Optionally, every captured frame can also be saved as its own image at 320, 480, 640 or 1280 pixels wide, or at the original resolution, and downloaded together as a ZIP. Very tall sheets can exceed browser canvas limits, especially in Safari at around 16.7 megapixels, so the tool warns you when a layout is too large.
| Video length | Grid | Interval |
|---|---|---|
| Under 2 minutes | 3 × 3 or 4 × 3 | About 10 seconds |
| 5–15 minutes | 4 × 4 or 5 × 4 | 20–45 seconds |
| 30–60 minutes | 5 × 6 or 6 × 6 | 1–2 minutes |
| 1–3 hours | 6 × 8 or 8 × 10 | 1–3 minutes |
Drop a video into the generator.
Set the number of columns and rows; the tool shows how often a frame will be taken.
Choose the sheet width, spacing and background, and turn the header and timestamps on or off.
Pick JPG or PNG, and optionally export each frame as a separate thumbnail.
Click Generate contact sheet, preview it and download the sheet or everything as a ZIP.
Use cases
Get a one-page overview of a long interview, lecture or surveillance recording to find the parts worth watching, or to share with a client who doesn't want to scrub through the whole file.
Store a contact sheet next to each video in an archive so you can identify files at a glance, with the duration and resolution written in the header.
Export every sampled frame as a separate image and pick the best one as a cover image for YouTube, a blog post or a video library.
Contact sheets are a common way to preview video content in posts and listings. A 1920-pixel JPG with timestamps is easy to upload and read.
Pro tips
Answers to common questions about the thumbnail generator.
The video is split into equal parts, one per tile, and the frame in the middle of each part is captured. That gives an even overview and avoids the black frames at the very start and end.
Frames are captured by your browser's video decoder, so the file must be in a format the browser can play. MP4 (H.264) and WebM work in every browser; HEVC, some MKV files and old AVI codecs may not. Converting to MP4 first solves this.
Browsers limit canvas size. Chrome, Edge and Firefox handle very large sheets, while Safari tops out at about 16.7 megapixels. The tool shows the output size and warns you when a layout is likely to fail.
Yes. Turn on Also export each frame and choose a size. Every captured frame is saved as its own JPG or PNG, named with its position and timestamp, and you can download them all as a ZIP.
It shows the time that was requested, rounded down to the second. Browsers seek to the nearest decodable frame, which is normally within a fraction of a second.
No. ToolEnhancer processes files on your own device inside the browser. They are never sent to, stored on or seen by our servers.
Yes. The thumbnail generator is free to use with no sign-up, no watermarks and no daily limits.