When one of our customers views their video for the very first time, one of the most common questions they ask is “How can I change that picture that shows up before my video starts playing?”

Well, that picture is called a thumbnail and it’s important because it’s what’s visible when the video isn’t playing and can be the deciding factor of whether or not someone wants to watch your video.

Today, I’m going to show you how to pick your thumbnail.
When you upload a video to YouTube, it randomly chooses three spots in the video to be used as the thumbnail. To get to where you can change this, go to your Youtube account and choose “My channel.” Once on your channel, click video manager and from the list of videos, click edit on the video whose thumbnail you want to change. You’ll see the three options to the right of the video preview.

If you upload your video to Vimeo, it will randomly generate 8 thumbnails and it will also allow you to scroll through your entire video to let you pick any picture you want. To do this, go to your video page and click settings under the video player. From there, scroll down to the thumbnails sections and pick the thumbnail you want to use.

Don’t panic if the thumbnail doesn’t change right away when you click back to your video. If you have your video embedded on a website, it may still show the old thumbnail for a while but give it a few days, it’ll catch up.

Now, if you are less than impressed with the thumbnail options and you don’t feel that any frame of your video is eye-catching enough, both sites allow you to upload a custom thumbnail. We talk about designing your own in a separate video.

Remember, thumbnails are like miniature marketing posters for your video – make them stand out and viewers will click them.

We hope this was helpful and feel free to check out some of our other videos. If you have any questions, give us a call at 314-843-3663 that’s 314-VIDEO ME. Thanks for watching and I’ll be CN U on video.