Since their introduction, social networking websites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo (among others) have attracted millions of users; many of whom have integrated these websites into their daily routine.   There are hundreds of social networking sites that support wide ranging interests and practices. While their key technological features are consistent, the cultures that emerge around these social networking sites are varied. Some facilitate advancing pre-existing social networks and friendships, while others help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views and/or activities, etcetera. Among these websites are those which have incorporated new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging, and photo/video-sharing.   As the popularity of of these social networking websites grow, with millions of users all over the world, several innovations have been applied.   One of these innovations includes
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Generating a thumbnail / screenshot of a video has many uses. Many video websites out there, including the ever popular YouTube, use this function to show a static preview of the video through a screen grab or set of screen grabs in image format. You may think it is difficult to create thumbnails from a video file. But I'm here to say 'no, it's not'!   To accomplish this task, I made use of this tool: FFmpeg. First a little information about FFmpeg. If you haven't come across this yet then you're missing out on an excellent bit of software to put in your tool kit. It can convert and stream all manner of video and audio files, it is open source (under LGPL, but with some optional GPL bits), and it is constantly being worked on and developed, thus improved.   FFmpeg's homepage is where you can grab the latest revision from SVN. If you want it for Windows, then one location I found with quite recent builds is http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/ffmpeg/.   Once I had the
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