title: Scripting VLC to capture first frame of a video - can't get command line to work
body: <p>I'm creating a script to pull a video off the web, create an image of the first frame, and save the image as a file. My script is handling grabbing a lot of videos and giving the file names a sequential number.</p>
  
  <p>My problem is in using VLC to grab the video and actually save the file. Experimenting with the command-line and just a local file before I put it into my script, I've tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>vlc -vvv -I dummy --video-filter=scene --start-time=1 --stop-time=1 --scene-format=jpeg --scene-ratio=24 --scene-prefix=EXEC samp.mp4 vlc://quit
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>-> uncaught exception</p>
  
  <pre><code>vlc -vvv -I dummy --no-audio --video-filter=scene --start-time=1 --stop-time=1 --scene-format=jpeg --scene-ratio=24 --scene-prefix=EXEC samp.mp4 vlc://quit
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>-> uncaught exception</p>
  
  <pre><code>vlc -vvv -I rc --video-filter=scene --start-time=1 --stop-time=1 --scene-format=jpeg --scene-ratio=24 --scene-prefix=EXEC samp.mp4 vlc://quit
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>-> uncaught exception; looks like I can't do without a -V option</p>
  
  <pre><code>vlc -vvv -I rc -V snapshot --video-filter=scene  --start-time=1 --stop-time=1 --scene-format=jpeg --scene-ratio=24 --scene-prefix=EXEC samp.mp4 vlc://quit
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>-> no vout display module matched "snapshot"; similarly for attempts with module "image", "scene", "opengl"</p>
  
  <p>I'm running VLC 2.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.7.3. Has anybody got VLC to work on the command line (so it's scriptable) to do image capture from videos?</p>
  
  <p>BTW, I've done extensive googling on this - the VLC documentation is hopelessly out of date and most suggestions on the web don't actually work with the latest version of VLC.</p>