While playing a media file in VLC, sometimes you will have the need to go frame by frame. To get to an exact shot or scene, you will need to play the video forward one frame at a time. VLC has a frame by frame feature that allows you to step just the tiniest bit ahead in a movie. It gives you full control of where you want to reach in the timeline. Unfortunately, VLC doesn’t support frame-stepping backwards; it’s only possible to move forward.
There are two simple ways you can follow to move one frame ahead at the time. One is by using the shortcut key and two is from the Advanced Controls bar of the player interface.
Shortcut Key
This has to be the simplest method. Just navigate in the timeline where you want to capture or pause at a frame. Then, hit the shortcut key: e.
To use this shortcut, your video can be either playing or pausing. If it is playing, then hitting ‘E’ would stop the play and will navigate it forward one frame at a time. Tap on the ‘E’ key on your keyboard a couple of times to get to the accurate place in the media.
If the hotkey ‘E’ doesn’t work for you, then it is likely that another keyboard character has been assigned to the task. You can view (or even edit) the shortcuts by going to Tools > Preferences and then by switching to the Hotkeys tab. Enter frame on the search area to bring it up easily. Edit it if you want or keep it as it is.
You may be interested in: How to Edit VLC Media Player Shortcuts or Hotkeys
Advanced Controls
The default layout of the player doesn’t display the next frame button on it. You will have to bring it up in the interface. If you haven’t changed anything, then go to the View menu and then click on Advanced Controls to turn it on.
You will notice another line of player controls appear right above the default set of media control keys. Press the last button in the advanced controls to access the frame by frame feature.
It looks like a film strip; actually, two film strips like they’re skipping (frame skipping). If you put your mouse pointer over it for a while, it will show the info. Press it and it will take you forward in the media one frame at a time.
If you can’t find the button in the advanced control interface, then you can add it using the Tools > Customize Interface feature.
To get additional details on customizing VLC interface: How to Customize VLC Media Player Interface
View Comments (93)
We got chat gpt dude, I'm not a programmer but ask chat gpt some answers do this job I certainly going to come back here to donate, or even create a donate page so that when it pay u bills u guys can developer such a thing. Its so necessary
For Heavens Sakes People. We are sending Astronauts to space. We have taken photos of the Entire KNOWN universe, we have AI Chatbots and You bunch of Losers CANT even freakin get to make a < Back One Frame button on VLC Player ????
This is SUCH a total Bullcrap B.S. Dont give us stupid lame excuses anymore. If its SOOOO god damned hard to get some coding done, then for heavens sake GET AN AI BOT to do it For you !!! What's so hard ???
All the USERS has been asking for this for So long. Whats really TAKING you so long to respond to some SMALL requests thingy ???? VLC has been pouring out with SO many versions, Patches. WHY cant they just GIVE THIS by the next Update ??? IT IS 2023...23 Years since 2020... are you all still that blind and ignorant ?
They have intentionally not implemented it because years ago they got annoyed with people who kept asking for it without understanding why it is more difficult to step back than forward.
The devs used to be based, but because of this one thing alone they became cringe.
Code it yourself, vlc is open source
they didnt fix it yet
For Heavens sake the answer is so simple. Since most of these coders are not working, since I do not see many astronaughts in space these days, we should be able to get them to work on really important stuff like frame +and -. They, after all, work for us, these people at NASA etc. Sounds like all we have to do is ask them to help. Help us! There that should do it
While I did enjoy your rant and I generally agree that this feature is indeed missing, I can't help to offer this reminder....It's free.... Say you give a car to someone and what you get in return is a bucket of vomit about scratches in the paint job. Just saying. Be reasonable guys, VLC is and has been for many years our go-to media player. Send some love their way.
@SURGI ICAL STRYKE
I just wanted to make a few observations/opinions on your comments:
1. AI bots are in their infancy at programming and cannot just make a full program that works right out of the gate. It still takes humans to fix their mistakes. At this point they are just emulating code they have been fed to them from websites where users posted code from years ago.
2. As a former IT tech, users have no idea what is easy or hard to implement. I had people NOT ask me to fix something because they thought it would be too hard to do. Some of those things were two second fixes and I told them to never hesitate to ask and I would tell them if it was an easy fix. Other times, they would ask for monumental projects that would take a year to complete and they thought it would only take a couple hours. I don't know how hard it is to implement a frame de-increment, but I'm not working on the project. Maybe it's not an easy thing to do.
3. It is 2023, but it has not been 23 years since 2020. But with your typo (or bad math), you have the audacity to call the people who work on VLC voluntarily: "blind and ignorant". These people are giving you quality software for FREE. If you don't like it, write your own software. VLC is incredible and a frame de-increment would be nice, but I would never bash these great software developers who devote their time for free. Comments like yours will motivate them to give up on projects like this and they could be abandoned and you may never see the feature you want.
Other than that, have a nice day.
also vlc already has +5 sec and -5 sec too...
def cant be that hard to implement.
how hard can it be to implement going backwards 1 frame, when they implemented going forward 1 frame...
i know nothing about coding but, i don't think this will take a year or longer.
Youtube already has it, if anything, just reverse engineer it and apply it for gods sakes
So true... I keep going back to MPC-HC just to use the option to skip frames on both directions :/
This comment made my day, thank you.
BS! Frame stepping includes forward and backward.
Previous frame step is what most of us want! Next frame step is already an existing feature for VLC.
MPC could do that with ease for a long time since and you can't, VLC till now?
You just omitted what you couldn't do. Frame stepping in this 'help' page is just half past.
While I don't approve of the omission, it's not that simple. In a nutshell, digital movies aren't stored as frames like analog film movies are. Each "frame" is only an update on any pixels that changed since last "frame", rather than an entire image. Thus, stepping backward once would require looking at every single step all the way back until you have a change to every single pixel in the grid, then running forward until you're one behind where you started. Those frames could conceivably be cached in memory, but you'd quickly run out. This would be super computation-intensive, and would lag severely in the cases where it would work at all.
It's not as complicated as that (and its not as simple as others have implied either).
An "intra-frame" or "I-frame" is a full image. But very few (if any) modern CODECs will encode nothing but I-frames, because it wastes a lot of bandwidth. So the I-frames will be presented at some frequency lower than the frame rate.
The intervening frames will be either forward-predicted inter-frames ("P-frames") or bidirectionally-predicted inter-frams ("B-frames"). Both types represent the diffs between adjacent frames and are used to improve compression ratios.
So, in the worst case (where the player isn't caching any completed frames), to skip backward, you would have to walk back to the previous I-frame and then process the P/B-frames until you get to the required frame.
Depending on how far back you have to walk in order to find that I-frame, the CPU load and latency might be small or large, but it's quite possible.
Like lugni pointed out, Youtube has the feature, and it has for about a decade now. You sound like someone who knows the jargin but not at all how video works. Digital video is presented in frames, every heard of framerate? Technically the video file is a bunch of ones and zeros but I could deduce analog film to "caught protons". Digital video doesnt work without a framerate.
This comment does nothing but show that you know less about video encoding than you think.
What does framerate have to do with frame stepping?
I'd say, like a lot of things involving code, it depends. YouTube has previous and next frame keys (comma and period) for all of their videos. After testing their implementation, I believe depending on the video format you'd only need to capture one extra full frame in memory however many steps back you want to allow, then switching to the previous frame would just require blitting the cached full back frame, and then blitting all the change frames from disk after the back frame up to the previous frame. If those change frames need to be cached too, that's at least a lot better than caching a bunch of full frames.
This is correct, however at least one other player ("mpv") do support skipping backwards frame-by-frame. And yes, it's not as smooth as stepping forward but surprisingly usable.
Where is the previous frame tho?
Another simple solution is PotPlayer... It does it.
This is a often asked-for feature, going back years. There's a VLC extension called "Jump to time Previous frame v3" that's said to work. (Haven't tried it yet, but will shortly.) My workaround has been to use the E key for forward frame advance and if I miss the frame I want, use CTRL-T to back up about 1 to 3 seconds and go forward again.
Yes, how do you go to the previous frame?
Can frame advance and record be used concurrently? In other words, can I use pause and frame-advance to get the video positioned to the exact frame I want the recording to start at, click record, click frame advance until I reach the end of the desired clip, then click record again to turn it off, and end up with a video clip that will play from/to the selected frames at normal speed?
You can use the frame advance to get the the desired frame just once. After that, if you hit record, we have no control over advancing frames or the video navigation overall.
Thanks for the hint for stepping frames forward - very handy when checking surveillance camera material. However, I immediately faced several situations, that I'd need also stepping frames backwards...
All these people asking for a feature and noone offering a reward for the feature. lol
Imagine offering a reward for a basic media player feature. It's almost as basic as pause and play.
That's because it's one of the most basic and expected features in any media player.
What is the best way to setup a reward for a features?
Ive wanted this for a long time and might be willing to set something up. Definitely willing to donate.
How is this not a thing yet? :/ I'm sick of having to use quicktime for work. And it's such an easy addition...
I am a digital artist who paints, illustrates, and animates, often while studying a video (tutorial or other). I have a legit need to frame-step backwards and forwards often. Frame stepping backward would be a great addition to VLC Media Player.
There are many users coming from Mac to Windows and who use Quicktime desperately looking for a solid windows video player. I can't believe after all these years VLC still won't support this super simple request. They need to hurry thought because personally I got tired of waiting and started using the Daum POT Player which I really like. If they ever release the frame by frame I'll consider coming back to VLC but not until that point.