Video thumbnail

Pick the frame yourself instead of accepting whatever the player landed on. Scrub to the moment you want, set the size, and save it. Avoid moments of fast movement, because those frames are rarely sharp.

How to use it

1 Add the video and scrub the preview.
2 Stop on the frame you want and fine tune with the arrow keys.
3 Set the output size and format.
4 Export and download the thumbnail.

Formats this tool accepts

Each one has a reference page covering what it stores and where it is supported.

Questions about video thumbnail

What size should a video thumbnail be?

1280 by 720 is the common target and covers most platforms, which downscale from it. Match the aspect ratio of the video itself so the image is not letterboxed or cropped unexpectedly.

Why is my chosen frame soft?

Compressed video spends fewer bits on frames during motion, and the camera may have added motion blur as well. Pick a moment where the subject is still, ideally just after a cut when a keyframe has been encoded at full quality.

Can I get several candidate thumbnails at once?

Use the frame extraction tool with an interval, then pick the best one from the set. That is usually quicker than scrubbing through a long video by hand.

Are my files uploaded to a server?

No. The whole thing runs inside the browser tab you already have open. Your file is read straight from your own disk, worked on there, and handed back as a download. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no account and no queue.

Does it work offline?

Yes, once the page has loaded once. The engine is cached by the browser, so you can turn off your connection, reload the page and keep working. That is a useful side effect of doing the processing locally rather than a separate offline mode you have to enable.