3G2 to PPM Converter

3G2 to PPM: A Still Out of a CDMA-Era Phone Clip

A .3g2 is a video file recorded on, or sent to, a phone on a CDMA network — the format defined by 3GPP2 as the counterpart to the 3GPP body's .3gp, built on the same ISO base media skeleton as MP4 but stripped down for handsets and slow radio links. A .ppm is the opposite of stripped down: a fifteen-byte header and then every pixel written out in full, with no compression and no metadata at all.

This page pulls one frame — or a sampled series of frames — out of the clip and writes it in that raw form. It is the right conversion when the next thing to touch the image is code rather than a person: a script, a computer-vision routine, a build step, anything that would rather read three integers and a byte array than link a decoder. If you want to look at the picture, 3G2 to PNG is losslessly identical and far smaller, and 3G2 to JPG smaller again.

This page accepts both .3g2 and .3gp uploads, because the two containers are close enough that the same decoder handles either.

What Is Probably Inside Your 3G2

Handset recordings were built around what a 2000s phone could encode in real time, and that narrows the possibilities considerably:

The frame size row is the one that matters for a still. A single frame from a CIF-sized recording is 352 × 288 pixels; blown up on a modern display that is a postage stamp, and no setting on this page can add detail the handset never captured.

How to Convert 3G2 to PPM

1. Upload Your 3G2 File: Drag the .3g2 onto the page or click "Add Files"; .3gp files are accepted here too. Several clips can be queued and they all run with the same settings. Handset recordings are small, so uploads are usually quick.
2. Choose Frame Selection: Specific Frame takes one frame at the Time (seconds) you enter, and that field opens at 0. Multiple Screenshots samples across the whole clip at a Capture Rate, which opens at "1 second per frame" and offers everything from ten frames a second down to one frame every ten seconds, writing a separate PPM for each. We confirmed that seeking works on a 3G2: frames extracted at 0 seconds and at 3 seconds from the same file are genuinely different pictures.
3. Set Image resolution and Bit Depth: Image resolution opens on Keep original, with Resolution Percentage (opening at 80), Preset Resolutions, Width, Height and Width x Height alongside. Bit Depth opens on 8-bit (Recommended), with 16-bit (High Precision) and 1-bit (Black & White) as the alternatives.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .ppm. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

The Size of the Still Is Decided Before You Start

A PPM stores raw samples, so its size is pixel count times three bytes plus a short header — content is irrelevant. That makes the output entirely predictable from the source's frame size, which for a handset recording you can usually guess:

We extracted a 352 × 288 frame from a test .3g2 and read the result: the header is P6, then 352 288, then 255, then raw RGB bytes with no separator and no compression. Choosing 16-bit doubled the file to 608,273 bytes without adding a single distinct colour, because the source decodes to 8 bits per channel. Choosing 1-bit produced 304,141 bytes — within two bytes of the 8-bit file — while collapsing the picture to eight possible colours, because the depth changes the value range in the header without changing the byte written per sample.

The short version: 8-bit is the setting, and Image resolution is the only control that changes the size.

Why Upscaling a Handset Frame Never Helps

Image resolution offers presets up to 4320p and a percentage that goes above 100, and on a source like this both are traps. A 176 × 144 frame contains 25,344 pixels of real information. Setting a 1080p preset interpolates it up to roughly two million pixels — every one of the added pixels invented by the scaler — and the PPM grows to over six megabytes of raw bytes holding exactly the same amount of detail, now blurrier because it has been stretched.

If something downstream requires a specific pixel grid, scale it up there where you can pick the algorithm. If you just want the frame, leave Keep original alone. And if the still is too small to be useful, that is a limit of the recording, not of this conversion — a 2000s handset camera simply did not capture more.

Going the other way is worthwhile: Resolution Percentage at 50 quarters the file exactly, which is useful when you are sampling many frames from one clip.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does this page accept .3gp files as well as .3g2?

Because the two containers are siblings and the same decoder reads both. .3gp was defined by 3GPP for GSM and UMTS handsets; .3g2 was defined by 3GPP2 for CDMA2000 networks, adding the CDMA speech codecs and trimming a few things the GSM side allowed. Structurally they share the ISO base media file format, so a frame extraction does not care which one you upload. Everything on this page applies to either.

Can I extract a frame from a specific moment rather than the start?

Yes. Type the time into Time (seconds) under Specific Frame; decimals work. We verified this on a real 3G2 rather than assuming it — comparing extractions at 0 seconds and 3 seconds from the same file shows two genuinely different pictures, so the seek is landing where you asked. If you do not know where the moment is, sample with Multiple Screenshots at one frame every few seconds first and then go back for the exact time.

Why is a still from a tiny phone video 300 KB?

Because nothing about a PPM is compressed. A 352 × 288 frame is 101,376 pixels at three bytes each, which is 304,128 bytes before the fifteen-byte header — the arithmetic is the entire explanation, and it is why the sizes in the table above can be published in advance. The original .3g2 was compressed by a factor of a hundred or more; the PPM undoes all of that and stores the decoded pixels in full.

Will the still look better if I choose 16-bit?

No. A 3G2 carries 8-bit video, so a 16-bit PPM stores identical values padded out to two bytes each. Our measurement bears that out: the 16-bit file came to 608,273 bytes against 304,143 for the 8-bit version, with no increase in the number of distinct colours in the image. Pick 16-bit only when a downstream tool refuses anything narrower.

Does the 1-bit option produce a smaller black-and-white file?

It produces a black-and-white file that is not smaller. The maximum sample value in the header drops to 1 and each channel becomes 0 or 1 — eight possible colours in total — but a full byte is still written per sample, so our 352 × 288 test came out at 304,141 bytes against 304,143 for the 8-bit version. If a small monochrome file is the goal, convert to PNG instead and let a real compressor work on it.

What happens to the audio track?

It is discarded. A PPM is a single picture with a three-line header; there is no structure in the format for sound, so the AMR, AAC or CDMA speech track in your clip is dropped during frame extraction. If you want the audio as well, run the same file through an audio conversion as a separate job — the video and audio extractions are independent of each other.

My video looks interlaced or combed in the still. Can I fix it here?

No — there is no deinterlacing anywhere in this pipeline, so whatever the decoder produces is what lands in the PPM. Handset recordings are progressive far more often than not, so combing is unusual on a 3G2; if you do see it, the fix is to deinterlace the video in an editor first and then extract the frame. Choosing a moment with little movement is the cheap workaround.

How do I get many frames instead of one?

Use Multiple Screenshots and set the Capture Rate, which opens at one frame per second and ranges from ten frames a second to one every ten seconds. Each sampled frame becomes its own .ppm. At CIF resolution that is roughly 300 KB per frame, so one minute at one frame per second is about 18 MB and the same minute at ten frames per second is about 180 MB. Sample coarsely first, then re-run with Specific Frame for the moment you actually want.

How are my files handled while they are on your servers?

The .3g2 is uploaded over an encrypted connection, decoded on our servers, and both the upload and the extracted frames are deleted automatically after a few hours. Files are never shared or made public, no watermark is added, and no account is required. Handset clips are small, so this is one of the few conversions where the upload is not the slow part.