[FFmpeg-user] How to restrict ffprobe output to a certain number of frames?

[Torsten Kaiser]

On 29.10.23 20:28, Ulf Zibis wrote:
> Hi,
>
> when I use
> ffprobe -show_frames INPUT
> I get all frames.
> But I only want some frames e.g. the first 10 or frame 100 to 109.

ffprobe doesn't seem to provide anything like -ss -t or -frames. So I 
assume it always probes the whole thing.

I would suggest you cut the desired frames you need for probing to a 
temporary snippet.

In Korn this would look like this:

#EXAMPLE VALUES

SOURCE="Source.mp4"

START="10.00" #for 25fps frame-precise with a 0.01 seconds resolution

FRAMES="10" # for cutting  ten frames beginning with the one at 10.00 
seconds

PREVIEW="TEST.mp4"

# COMMANDS

ffmpeg -y -ss $START -i $SOURCE  -frames $FRAMES $PREVIEW # generate 
test clip

ffprobe -show_frames 
$PREVIEW                                                #probing the preview

rm $PREVIEW #to tidy up

in Korn I can catenate these lines with "&&" to a single line, so that 
following commands only get executed if their predecessor(s) didn't fail.

Hope it's readable enough to translate it to your preferred coding 
language.