What video players out there exists that have frame by frame playback feature ?
9 Answers
SMPlayer can do that.
Pause the movie
from the menu choose Play > Frame step or press . (dot)
SMPlayer is free and open source. a portable version is also available.
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That feature is available in the "base" mplayer, too. But it sucks. I'd suggest to use a NLE program like virtualdub or kdenlive.– dom0Jul 30, 2013 at 16:08
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You can step backwards according to this feature request. Not a clue how, have asked on the thread though. Mar 23, 2015 at 17:40
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1How do you even know it's stepping forward? I have tried clicking pause and pushing DOT 100 times and the time still shows the same number of seconds Similarly clicking play..frame step– barlopOct 9, 2016 at 22:27
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7SMPlayer can do forward and BACKWARD. Ensure that under Option -> Settings the option mpv is selected under Multimediamodule. Than use "." (dot) for Step Frame Forward and use "," (comma) for Step Backward.– musbachAug 31, 2017 at 7:47
Media Player Classic (Home Cinema) Sourceforge
answered Sep 23, 2009 at 19:22
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1To access that function, all you need to do is pause the video and press the left and right arrow to go back and forth by one frame.– alexSep 23, 2009 at 21:06
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no longer under development. (and besides when I tried it recently I ran into a bug of not going back frames though that bug might be just my situation)– barlopNov 25, 2020 at 18:18
I've landed on this page quite often when trying to watch video clips frame by frame. Having tried many of the suggestions, I'm still frustrated with the lack of availability or ease of use of such a feature, which I find indispensable in an analytic environment (I'm not trying to go frame by frame on Leia's slave costume).
Today having tried VLC only to discover it has a frame by frame forward but not backward, and subsequently landed on the VLC forums where many users ask for the feature, I learned something. It is apparently not an easy thing to do for certain codecs (as far as I can tell, the ones designed for streaming, or "multi-frame" compressions). For example, ImageJ will save AVI files which are evidently a sequence of JPEG images more or less concatenated into a single file. So here frame by frame is easy---the "codec" is "frame based". Take an MPEG movie, where if, on frame 512, the top left corner has not changed since frame 265, video players are unable to go backwards and render the image correctly for frame 511 without theoretically loading some unknown number of previous frames to build a "history" of the image.
Needless to say I do not believe any manipulation of data is impossible with a computer and certainly if these video players can render to the screen they could keep a buffer in RAM with a history of rendered frames to at least allow some amount of frame by frame, but this is not feasible for an entire HD movie and thus, at least in VLC's case, they don't see the point of implementing it for clips of some maximum duration.
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I guess even if that plugin for VLC to go back frames works, it would be keyframes, which is fine for many though darda might want actual frames– barlopNov 25, 2020 at 18:20
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1@LouisMaddox that plugin looks very limited, a comment mentions that it doesn't have a key to go back a frame.. So VLC still has "E" to go forward frames and no key to go back frames– barlopNov 25, 2020 at 18:22
Quick time can do it.
Hold down K and tap J or L – allows you to scrub the video in slow motion, viewing in either rewind or forward frame by frame
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2Or pause with space bar and use left-right arrow keys. But of course, QT is Mac/Windows only. The question doesn't specify the OS, but if it is for Linux there seems to be no player with the ability to go back frame by frame. I have to use a WinXP VM with QT for that.– mivkNov 30, 2013 at 13:17
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The KMPlayer will do this.
Space to pause and then f to advance frame (Shift+f to step back).
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not clear where to download that now? your KMPlayer link to forums doesn't work. This looks maybe ok kmplayer.com but when clicking PC 64X, it goes to some funny site (naver.com?!), and it's all in chinese– barlopNov 25, 2020 at 18:30
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mplayer will can do this. You can press . to go to the next frame
answered Dec 17, 2009 at 16:08
I use Zoom Player. Control frame-by-frame playback using the mouse scroll wheel. both ways.
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Downloaded 2012-08-08. I found the mouse wheel zooms by default. The frame-by-frame seems unreliable for an AVI created in MATLAB; the player acknowledges "next frame" and "previous frame" but the image does not always change. Perhaps compression really trips up these players which are aiming for a huge feature set.– dardaAug 9, 2012 at 0:22
ImageJ can load some videos as a stack which makes frame-by-frame easy in either direction. http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/
It's significantly limited as far as codecs.
"We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise..."The answers to this question are, in fact, straightforward facts: either a software has this feature or it does not. It's black and white. How exactly will this question lead to arguments or debates?