Dear Church Tech,
Whenever you have successfully uploaded a video to YouTube or Vimeo, make sure you check your video thumbnail. If you don’t know what the “video thumbnail” is, count your lucky stars that you haven’t received an email asking about “the weird picture of me on the Youtubes.”
Before I fully explain what a video thumbnail is and bore the more advanced segment of Church tech, let me first present you with an example of why checking the default video thumbnail is important.
Example A
Before pressing play on this Vimeo video from CROSS 2013, it would seem as though Mark Dever’s interest in what John Piper has to say about the relationship between marriage and missions is less than stellar—boring even.
Is Mark really this bored? Perhaps he was hoping for something more along the lines of Piper GIFs?
I believe this has more to do with the fact that the Church tech responsible for uploading this video neglected to check the video thumbnail (assuming that Mr. Dever hadn’t been rude to the Church tech team and this was the result of plotted revenge on behalf of the tech team).
Video Thumbnails
For those that do not know, a “video thumbnail” is the image used before the user clicks to play the video. Services like Vimeo and YouTube select a default image randomly from a single frame of the video; however, you can choose an alternate clip or upload a custom image that you’ve made of your own.
Vimeo
On Vimeo, go to your video settings page and scroll down to find your thumbnail options:
YouTube
In YouTube, jump into the Video Manager, click on ‘edit’ next to the video you want to update, and make your change here:
Thumbs-Up for Thumbnails!
No matter the video you are uploading—the Sunday sermon, Sunday morning church announcements, or the summer youth group mission trip to Mexico, make sure you’ve double check your video thumbnail—create a custom if you like—otherwise…
[Video via Vimeo]
[…] Eric Dye on YouTube, video thumbnails, and that face you don’t remember making […]