This is the image (or video clip) that shows on your video player before the viewer presses play. It can be used to entice a the viewer to click play and/or give the viewer a preview of what's to come in the video.
By default, we will generate a thumbnail for your video from an image of the first frame of your video. So if you don't change your thumbnail, this will be what is used.
To access this feature, go to the APPEARANCE & STYLE >> Custom Thumbnail.
You have 2 choices here, which are to use an image or a video (we don't use a .gif image to simulate a video, we use an actual video clip which loads faster and performs better than a .gif image).
Image
Image will be selected by default. As mentioned above, an image from the first frame of your video is used by default.
To change that image you can either add the URL of an image that is already online, upload an image file, or use an image from part of your video.
Image Recommendations
We do recommend an image that has a 16:9 aspect ratio so it fits nicely with your video. So if you are adding your own image we would recommend 1920 X 1080 or 1280 X 720 image.
If you decide to use an image that is small or 1:1 ratio (square image), we will attempt to keep the image as is (instead of stretching it out) and set it against a black background.
We also recommend that you do NOT use an image with a transparent background.
To add a URL, simply remove the URL of your default image and replace it with your own:
To upload a new file, simply click on the upload button here and select a file from your computer:
In this example, I uploaded a new image from my computer and you can see that it changed the thumbnail image displayed and also gave a new URL for where the image is being stored:
Finally, you can choose a part of the video to use as your thumbnail. Simply choose the part of the video in hours, mins, secs and then click on Generate Thumbnail.
In this example, I will choose the 15 second mark and then click on Generate Thumbnail. You will see the new image generated:
When you done, just click the SAVE button and the thumbnail will be saved to your video.
Video
To use a video poster, select video from the top. By default, we will use a portion of your video from :00 to :05 to make the default poster.
Similar to the image option, you can either add the URL of a video that is already online, upload a video file, or use a portion of your video.
To add a URL, simply remove the URL of your default video and replace it with your own:
To upload a new file, simply click on the upload button here and select a file from your computer:
Finally, you can generate it from your video. In this example, I chose to start at the 10 second mark. Just select 10 and then click in Generate Video Poster.
This will create a video poster from :10 to :15:
