Video playing method and system, server and terminal equipment

The invention discloses a video playing method and system, a server and terminal equipment, which are used for playing a latest image extracted by the server from a corresponding video image frame in advance when the terminal equipment waits for displaying a video image, shortening the time for a user to wait for displaying the video image, and improving the user experience. The video playing method provided by the invention comprises the following steps: polling information of each monitoring device once at a preset time interval, and updating a corresponding picture file at a corresponding preset frequency according to a hotspot attribute of each monitoring device; when a video code stream playing request initiated by a user terminal is received, the storage address of the requested latest picture file and the storage address of the video code stream are sent to the user terminal, so that the user terminal obtains the latest picture file for playing and obtains the corresponding video file for decoding in t