- I have a theory that the thumbnail generator
for most video hosts has been developed to
find the most ridiculous looking frame in my video.
It's usually something along the lines of
mouth half open, dorky look on my face.
So I always take the extra time to create my own thumbnail.
There are a lot of ways to go about this.
I'm going to show you how to create that right
here in Camtasia.
Here, I have a brand new project
with my exported final video on the timeline.
I'll start by scrubbing through
and finding a section that does a good job
of telling my story.
And I happen to know that somewhere in here
is the frame I'm looking for.
When I get to that area I can use the keyboard
comma to go back, period to go forward, frame by frame
till I find the frame that's going to work for my thumbnail.
Now I'm going to export that single frame.
I'm going to go up here to export
and choose export frame as.
You could also do ctrl F if that floats your boat.
Okay. From here, I like this naming convention.
If you want to rename it something else, that's fine.
I like this one.
And I'm going to make sure import to media bin is
checked here and click save.
And there is my frame.
Now I don't actually need my video here anymore.
I'm just making a thumbnail.
So I'm going to delete that to get it out of the way
and pull down my custom frame.
And I'm also going to lock this track
so I don't accidentally move it around.
Okay. So here's my base template.
Now I can add whatever I want using
all the cool design tools in Camtasia.
For the sake of time I've already done that.
So let me go ahead and enable these tracks here.
And here I have a down and dirty thumbnail
that tells my story in a single frame.
Once again, I need to export this as a frame.
So I'm going to go up to export, choose export frame as.
And I'll rename that using my naming convention.
Click save and pull this down here so you can see it.
Here's my custom thumbnail.
I can upload it to my video host and replace whatever mock
or the image that's already been created.
The thumbnail could also be used in an email, a newsletter
or whatever method you use to share your creations.
You don't have to be a graphic designer to
create a thumbnail.
Even a basic frame with some descriptive text
is probably a better option than just leaving
thumbnail creation up to the
soulless AI running your video host.