@realcaseyrollins here's a Bash script that shows what I meant. Working from a random frame is slower than from a timestamp but it gets there in the end. You just have to provide two arguments: video file and subtitle file.

#!/bin/bash

framecount=$(ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -count_packets -show_entries stream=nb_read_packets -of csv=p=0 "$1");
(( randomframe = ( $RANDOM * 2**15 + $RANDOM ) % $framecount ));

ffmpeg -copyts -i "$1" -vf "subtitles=$2,select=gte(n\,$randomframe)" -vframes 1 "$1.png"

Does that work with #PGS subtitles? My copy of #ffmpeg is choking on the subtitles, although it can take screenshots without the subtitles well enough.

@realcaseyrollins the documentation suggests it's possible, but I don't think I have anything with PGS subtitles that I could test. If you point me to a test case I can download from somewhere, I'll take a look

If I gave you my file, that would be piracy 😂 And although I did use #ffmpeg to extract the #PGS subtitle into a .sup file, it’s too big for to file upload requirements here.

So I’ve made two bat files so far. One is working, but doesn’t have subtitles:

ffmpeg -i Arrival_t00.mkv -ss 00:05:02 -frames:v 1 foobar.png

The other one, on the first line, successfully extracts the subtitles:

ffmpeg -i Arrival_t00.mkv -map 0:s:0 -c copy out.sup

And then has multiple failed attempts to take a burnt-in screenshot:

ffmpeg -i Arrival_t00.mkv -ss 00:05:02 -frames:v 1 -vf subtitles=out.sup foobar2.png

ffmpeg -i Arrival_t00.mkv -ss 00:05:02 -map 0:v -map 0:s:0 -filter_complex “[0:v][0:s:0]overlay[v]” foobar2.png

ffmpeg -i Arrival_t00.mkv -i Arrival_t00.mkv -map 0:6 -ss 00:05:02 -frames:v 60 mp4 output.mp4

With the last line, I was hoping to make a burnt-in #MP4 and then take a screenshot of that video.

@realcaseyrollins if you can cut down the video to a few seconds of dialogue I would think you could upload that to e.g. dropbox under fair use rules. Your commands look pretty much like what I'd be trying though so I think you're on the right track