The success of a video correlates with the coolness of the thumbnail. The worst mistake YouTube has made ("What?! YouTube has a terrible interface?!") was allowing YouTube Partners to assign thumbnails to their videos. What you get is an overwhelming amount of deceptive thumbnails, which are not even screenshots from the actual video. Thus there is you and me who are destined to upload our videos in blind hope of having one of our three random screenshots turn out to be something exciting. And typically that screenshot is not.
Vimeo and similar services have hit the nail right on the head by providing a large variety of screenshots from which to choose. You can even upload your own thumbnail if you so desire.
"But how do I force YouTube to give me more thumbnail options?"
If you are so desperate to stick with YouTube as the platform to publish your videos, create several versions of your desired video. However in each version extend the length of your video by adding black to the end. For example, in version 1 of your video, add one second of black to the end. Version 2, two seconds, version 3, three seconds, and so on. Then once all are uploaded, browse each video until you find an exciting thumbnail. The algorithm YouTube uses to randomly grab thumbnails is much too complex to crack. I bet they assign thumbnails based upon the phase of the moon. Essentially it's impossible to upload a video to YouTube and tell YouTube to use 1 frame as your thumbnail. It's a gamble.
Vimeo and similar services have hit the nail right on the head by providing a large variety of screenshots from which to choose. You can even upload your own thumbnail if you so desire.
"But how do I force YouTube to give me more thumbnail options?"
If you are so desperate to stick with YouTube as the platform to publish your videos, create several versions of your desired video. However in each version extend the length of your video by adding black to the end. For example, in version 1 of your video, add one second of black to the end. Version 2, two seconds, version 3, three seconds, and so on. Then once all are uploaded, browse each video until you find an exciting thumbnail. The algorithm YouTube uses to randomly grab thumbnails is much too complex to crack. I bet they assign thumbnails based upon the phase of the moon. Essentially it's impossible to upload a video to YouTube and tell YouTube to use 1 frame as your thumbnail. It's a gamble.
Cool hint: Even if you are not searching for a good thumbnail, it is always a good habit to add filler (black) on to the end of your videos. YouTube cuts off your video about a 1/2 to 1 second too soon. For example, in Black Coffee (an old video of mine) the original has at least a second buffer at the end. However YouTube has cut off the end, creating a very suddenly unpleasant and jarring end. I'm sure an engineer at YouTube said one day, "If we cut a 1/2 second off of all videos that are uploaded, and if there are 12,000 videos uploaded daily (total length: 1,728,000 seconds of footage), we would cut 1.6 hours of footage, saving our massive servers $25 a day!" Amazing aren't they?
Sometimes someone uploads a video and YouTube pins an awesome thumbnail to their video. Immediately their views skyrocket. This is why I wryly say, "They were blessed with a good thumbnail."
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