I’m attempting to download snapshots from a video provided by the U.S House of Representatives:

https://houseliveprod-f9h4cpb9dyb8gegg.a01.azurefd.net/east/2024-04-11T08-55-12_Download/video_3000000_1.mp4

I am using this command to do so:

ffmpeg -ss 03:33:33 -i <mp4_url> -y -vframes 1 test.png

My intention is to fast-seek to the desired timestamp and take a snapshot over HTTP. However, when doing so, the performance is not great. A snapshot takes about 10s per 3hrs of video and seems to increase fairly linearly at that rate.

However, when using ffmpeg on the same video locally, it’s super fast! Sub-500ms regardless of the desired timestamp.

Is there some magic that could be done here to help it seek to the desired timestamp more quickly over HTTP, or is this just as fast as it gets?