video_thumbnail_gen 0.6.2

A production-grade Flutter plugin to generate video thumbnails on Android and iOS. Supports JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, batch extraction, metadata, and custom caching.

0.6.2 — 2026-06-03

• Shortened package description in pubspec.yaml to fit within the 60-180 character limit required by pub.dev guidelines.

0.6.1 — 2026-06-03

• Update README.md screenshot URLs to use absolute raw GitHub paths to resolve broken images on pub.dev.

0.6.0 — 2026-06-03

🎉 Initial Release of video_thumbnail_gen

First public release of video_thumbnail_gen, a modern, production-grade replacement for video_thumbnail, maintained by Hadi. Forked and significantly extended from the original video_thumbnail by justsoft.

🛠️ Fixed Issues & Optimizations

• iOS WebP Memory Leak: Fixed a critical memory leak in VideoThumbnailPlugin.m where WebP data buffers were not freed. Added WebPFree(output) to resolve it.
• Android File Descriptor Leak: Wrapped FileOutputStream in a try-with-resources statement in buildThumbnailFile to prevent unclosed file descriptors.
• Android Bitmap Memory Leak: Fixed a memory leak where the original high-resolution bitmap was not recycled after calling createScaledBitmap. Introduced a scaleAndRecycle() helper.
• Example App Settings bug: Resolved duplicate settings widget instantiations in the UI by rebuilding settings dynamically from the Drawer rather than caching stale widgets.
• Example App UI Cleanliness: Cleared out the previous thumbnail when a new URL or source is selected, preventing the UI from showing outdated images.
• Example App Storage & Toast bug: Fixed storage write issues on Android by requesting appropriate permissions and saving to the correct external storage directory. The app now displays a success toast containing the full file path.
• Image Format Overflow: Corrected overflow issues in the format selection menu of the example app.

📣 Community & GitHub Notice

If you run into any issues, have feature requests, or want to contribute optimizations, please open an issue or pull request on our GitHub repository: github.com/Itsxhadi/video_thumbnail_gen. I will be regularly maintaining, updating, and reviewing contributions for this package!

Core Features

• Generate video thumbnails in memory (thumbnailData) or as files (thumbnailFile)
• Supports JPEG, PNG, WebP, and HEIC output formats
• Custom max width/height with aspect-ratio-preserving scaling
• Capture frame at any timestamp (timeMs)
• HTTP(S) remote video URL support with custom headers
• First-Class YouTube URL Support: Direct extraction and downloading of thumbnails from the YouTube CDN (uses robust maxresdefault ➜ hqdefault ➜ 0.jpg fallback strategy)
• Custom output filename override (pass a full file path to thumbnailPath)
• content:// (SAF) URI support on Android

Performance

• Android: LruCache — 1/8 of heap, keyed by video+params
• iOS: NSCache — 40 MB cap, thread-safe, auto-evicting
• Batch extraction (thumbnailDataList) — opens codec once, seeks N times
• Thread pool capped to min(4, availableProcessors) on Android

New APIs

• VideoThumbnail.getVideoMetadata() — duration, dimensions, rotation, MIME type
• VideoThumbnail.thumbnailDataList() — batch frame extraction
• VideoThumbnail.clearCache() — programmatic cache eviction
• ThumbnailException + ThumbnailErrorCode — typed, machine-readable errors
• VideoMetadata — strongly-typed metadata model

Native Quality

• iOS: all callbacks dispatched on main thread (no random crashes)
• iOS: CGBitmapContext draw approach — handles all CGImageAlphaInfo colorspaces
• iOS: WebPFree(output) — WebP buffer properly freed after encoding
• Android: FileOutputStream in try-with-resources — no FD leaks
• Android: original bitmap recycled immediately after createScaledBitmap

Platform & Build

• Dart SDK >=3.0.0
• Flutter >=3.0.0
• Android: Gradle 8+, namespace com.itsxhadi.video_thumbnail, mavenCentral()
• iOS: deployment target iOS 11+, CocoaPods + Swift Package Manager support
• MethodChannel: plugins.itsxhadi.com/video_thumbnail_gen