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Poster:	eric urbane	Date:	Aug 6, 2023 8:00am
Forum:	movies	Subject:	Changing Thumbnails

How do you change thumbnails on a movie upload?

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Poster:	Back Channel	Date:	Aug 7, 2023 9:47pm
Forum:	movies	Subject:	Re: Changing Thumbnails

You can't.

What I've started doing as a workaround is to post a 30 second thumbnail video.

Take a look at my channel then click through to the videos and you'll get an idea.

Unfortunately, the process is a bit convoluted. But you have to follow these steps for it to work.

1. Create a 30 second video.* Archive will pick a thumbnail from somewhere in the first 15 seconds of that video.

2. Upload the thumbnail video alone. You'll want to customize your URL.

3. All the DERIVE task to complete on your thumbnail video. You'll then see the thumbnail that was chosen.

4. Now, upload the full video. After it DERIVES, check that the thumbnail is as expected.

I have more pro-tips if you need them.

* If creating a 30 second thumbnail video is new to you, you can easily do with the FFMPEG tool Look it up, and use this command.

ffmpeg -ss HH:MM:SS -t 00:00:30 -i "yourlongvideo.mp4" -c:v copy -c:a copy " 30 second thumbnail video.mp4"

HH:MM:SS is the start point timestamp of the long video.

I put a leading space in the title so that the name of the thumbnail file will be alphabetically first, thus ensuring that the thumbnail will not be changed when you upload the long video.