📼 video_thumbnailer

A Flutter plugin to generate video thumbnails (as images or raw bytes) from local video files on Android and iOS using platform channels.

🔧 This plugin is inspired by video_thumbnail but written from scratch for learning purposes, with cleaner native code and customizable logic.
Currently supports local file paths only. URL support will be added in a future release.

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✨ Features

• ✅ Generate thumbnail images from local video files
• ✅ Choose thumbnail time (in milliseconds)
• ✅ Customize output format (JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC)
• ✅ Adjust quality, max width, and max height
• ✅ Generate:
  • 📁 A thumbnail file (saved to disk)
  • 🧠 Thumbnail bytes (Uint8List for in-memory use)

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🚀 Getting Started

Add the dependency:

dependencies:
  video_thumbnailer:
    git:
      url: https://github.com/Morizuq/video_thumbnailer.git

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🧑‍💻 Usage

import 'package:video_thumbnailer/video_thumbnailer.dart';

void generate() async {
  final thumbnailPath = await VideoThumbnailer.generateThumbnail(
    videoPath: '/path/to/video.mp4',
    time: 1000, // in milliseconds
    format: 'jpeg', // JPEG
    quality: 75,
    maxWidth: 320,
    maxHeight: 240,
  );

  final thumbnailData = await VideoThumbnailer.generateThumbnailData(
    videoPath: '/path/to/video.mp4',
    time: 500,
    format: 'jpeg',
  );
}

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🧾 Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
videoPath	String	Local path to the video file	required
thumbnailPath	String?	Output path for thumbnail file (optional)	auto-generated
time	int	Timestamp to capture thumbnail (in ms)	0
format	int	Image format index: 0=JPEG, 1=PNG, etc.	0
maxWidth	int	Resize width	0 (original)
maxHeight	int	Resize height	0 (original)
quality	int	Compression quality (0–100)	75

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📱 Platform Support

Platform	Status
Android	✅ Supported
iOS	✅ Supported
Web	❌ Not supported
macOS/Linux/Windows	❌ Not supported

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🧪 Testing

Includes:

• Dart unit tests using flutter_test with mocked method channels

• iOS support added but tests TBD

To run tests:

flutter test

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🔮 Roadmap

• File-based thumbnail generation
• In-memory Uint8List support
• Remote video URL support
• Resize thumbnail dimensions
• Frame-by-frame extraction
• Null-safety & DartDoc complete typing

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🏗 Architecture

• Uses Flutter Method Channels
• Native Android: MediaMetadataRetriever
• Native iOS: AVAssetImageGenerator
• Dart-side plugin wraps method channels and provides an easy-to-use API

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📚 References

• Flutter Method Channel documentation: https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/platform-channels
• Android MediaMetadataRetriever: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaMetadataRetriever
• iOS AVFoundation: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avassetimagegenerator
• Original inspiration: video_thumbnail

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📦 Publishing

This plugin is currently in development and meant for educational use.
Feel free to fork, improve, or contribute via PRs!

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👨‍💻 Author

Morizuq Shoneye
Mobile Developer | Flutter & Kotlin
GitHub | Twitter

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📄 License

MIT License — See LICENSE