Video Contact Sheet

What is a video contact sheet?

A contact sheet is a single image with a grid of thumbnails taken at regular points through a video. The name comes from photography, where a whole roll of film was printed on one sheet for quick review. For video, it shows what a file contains without playing it. You can spot scenes and cuts, compare takes, or share a visual summary of a clip in a chat, ticket or report.

How to make a contact sheet from a video

Choose 2 to 8 columns and 2 to 8 rows, so a sheet holds 4 to 64 thumbnails. The default is a 4 × 4 grid with one frame every 10 seconds. The first thumbnail comes from the start of the video, and each next one is the set number of seconds later. Every thumbnail is 320 pixels wide, with the height set by the video's aspect ratio. Thin black gutters separate the tiles, so a 4-column sheet is about 1,300 pixels wide. The result is one JPEG. Timestamps are not printed on the tiles.

Cover the whole video

The sheet only covers as much of the video as the grid and interval allow. If the interval is too short, the sheet ends before the video does. If it is too long, the leftover cells stay black. To spread the thumbnails evenly from start to finish, work out the interval first:

• Note the video's length in seconds. A 12-minute video is 720 seconds.
• Multiply columns by rows to get the number of thumbnails. 4 × 4 is 16.
• Divide the length by the thumbnail count and round down. 720 ÷ 16 is 45 seconds.
• Enter that value as the seconds between frames and press Convert all.

Processed on your device

Make a video contact sheet online: a single JPEG grid of up to 8 × 8 thumbnails taken from the video at an interval you set. A media engine inside your browser does the work, so the video never leaves your device.

Works in your browser

Video encoding runs in this browser tab, on your own device. There is no upload and no queue. Your device does all the work, so a large or long clip can take a minute or more.

Before you start

Input: MP4, MOV, MKV, WEBM, AVI, and M4V. Output: JPEG. The settings appear before anything runs, so you can check them first. Your original file is never changed.

Video work uses a lot of memory and CPU. Try a short clip first and check that the sound and playback work. On a phone, split large batches into smaller ones.

Keep the original until you have opened and checked the result. The work happens in this browser tab, so the size you can handle depends on your device's memory, your browser and the file itself.

How to use the video Contact Sheet

1. Drop an MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI or M4V video into the box above.
2. Set the number of columns and rows, from 2 to 8 each.
3. Enter the seconds between frames. The video length divided by the number of tiles covers the whole clip.
4. Press Convert all and download the JPEG contact sheet.