August 9, 2014

Author's Pick #3 - Adding HD Custom Thumbnail for Your YouTube Videos

Posted by Domz at 8/09/2014

Adding HD custom Thumbnail for YouTube Videos


After making few video demos these past few days, I would like to share a tutorial on how to create High Quality thumbnails for your YouTube Videos. We will be using VLC "snapshot" to create a clear and vivid image output. As you’ve noticed, all my videos has only one format for each tutorial, If you want to do the same then read this short and simple tutorial.









Importance of a Good Video Thumbnail

A thumbnail serves as the window of your video, like a cover of a book or a landing page of a site. Aside from your title, description and tags, this is how you tell why people should click your videos. I enumerated some of the benefits of having a good video thumbnail.

- Can easily grab viewer’s attention
- Can display professionalism, brand and quality
- Can create an organized appealing channel
- Can create video Identity and predetermines success

Everyone would want those benefits right? So why not try this out.



TUTORIAL

The video above tells everything but I would like to create a written tutorial somehow.

1. Download VLC from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html. The free version is enough. Install it of course.

2. You can make it as your default video player if you want. Simply find a sample video in your computer > right click on it > click properties > click "open with" > change it to VLC and apply.

3. Now play a video you want to extract a good thumbnail.

4. Simply "pause" to the right timing you prefer to capture a good snapshot.

5. While paused, click on the "video" tab above the player and choose "Take Snapshot". That particular frame will be automatically saved.

6. To locate the output, simply go to your image under libraries. There you can see your high quality thumbnail. Additionally, you can edit it with a photo editor to add text, color and more effects.

7. Now if you want to use it on YouTube, simply upload your video. After uploading, click on the "custom thumbnail" and upload your snapshot taken from VLC. You're done.

You can also change the snapshot output from png to jpg or vice versa. Just go to VLC > Tools > Preferences > Video > scroll down and you can see the settings there.



CONCLUSION

This tutorial is simple yet very useful for those sites supporting videos like ours. Not only does it makes your video preview organized but makes your channel neater. However, always remember to keep your thumbnails appropriate and relevant to their topics. Never mislead people just to gain views.


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