When you’re watching a movie or TV show, it’s important to be able to follow the story line. This means being able to see the events that happen in each frame. In order to do this, you need to use a media player that supports frame by frame playback. There are many different media players that support this type of playback, but VLC is one of the most popular options. To start playing a frame by frame movie in VLC, open the player and select “File > New > Movie.” Then enter a name for your movie and click “Create.” Once your movie has been created, you can play it by selecting “File > Play.” When you play a movie in VLC, each frame is played as it would be in real life. This means that if there are pauses between frames, these pauses will be shown as white lines on the screen. If you want to change how frames are played when they’re displayed onscreen, you can do this by editing the “Movie Settings” file located in the same directory as your movie file. This file contains information about how VLC plays movies. You can find it by opening up your file manager and looking for “Movie Settings.” There you’ll find a variety of settings that affect how frames are played when they’re displayed onscreen.
RELATED: 10 Useful Features Hidden in VLC, The Swiss Army Knife of Media Players
Use a Keyboard Shortcut to Move Frames in a Video
To use a hotkey to play your video frame by frame, then first, open your video file with VLC.
When the video opens, on your keyboard, press the E key.
If your video is playing, VLC will pause it and let you move one frame at a time.
Keep hitting E to move frame by frame in your video. When you want to go back to normal playback, press Spacebar on your keyboard. That’s all there is to it.
If you don’t get the frame-by-frame feature with the E hotkey, or you’d like to change the key, then access the Tools > Preferences > Hotkeys menu in VLC. There, next to “Next Frame,” you’ll see the current hotkey for the feature. You can change it by double-clicking it and pressing a new key.
Enjoy watching your videos precisely with VLC.
RELATED: Master VLC With These 23+ Keyboard Shortcuts
Use an On-Screen Button to Play Frame by Frame
VLC offers an on-screen button that you can use to make your video play frame by frame. This button is located in the “Advanced Controls” section at the bottom-left corner of the VLC interface.
The button looks like a play button with a vertical line beside it. You can press this button to pause your video and have it play one frame at a time.
Keep hitting the button to move the frames forward in your video.
In case you don’t see that button, you’ll have to enable it from VLC’s settings. To do that, from VLC’s menu bar, select Tools > Customize Interface.
On the “Toolbars Editor” window, from the “Toolbar Elements” section, drag the “Frame by Frame” option and drop it onto the toolbar buttons in the “Line 1” or “Line 2” section (depending on where you want to place the button).
And that’s how you get a perfect screenshot of a specific frame in your videos with VLC. Very handy!
Just like that, you can slow down the video playback on other platforms like YouTube and Netflix. Check out our guides to learn how to do that.
RELATED: How to Speed Up YouTube’s Playback Speed (or Slow It Down)
