video-thumbnails

---
name: video-thumbnails
description: Choose and make still or animated covers for a video. Use for thumbnails, posters, preview frames, short GIF loops, and aspect-ratio variants.
---

# Video thumbnails

Choose a moment that explains the video at a glance. Brightness or detail alone is not enough: the frame should show the subject, action, or result the viewer came to see.

## Find candidate moments

Sample the video across its duration. Skip empty frames, transition frames, motion blur, and the first or last instant unless they were designed as covers. Select a small set of visually distinct candidates and show them together with timestamps. Favor frames with clear subjects, good contrast, readable text, and enough space for a title when a title is needed.

Treat automatic scoring as a shortlist. Inspect the candidates and choose the frame that tells the story. Let the user choose when several candidates represent meaningfully different messages.

## Make each aspect ratio

Create only the ratios needed for the destination. Reframe each one independently. Keep faces, controls, text, and product edges intact; extend the background or use a designed layout if a crop would remove essential information.

If the original video is generated from a composition, render the selected moment directly from that composition at each target size. For ordinary footage, extract a high-quality frame and crop or compose it carefully. Check the final image at phone size.

## Animated covers

When requested, choose a short moment with gentle motion and similar start and end frames. Trim to a natural loop point or use a brief crossfade if it does not duplicate a moving subject. Keep the file small enough for the destination. Check the seam by watching several repeats; a duplicate hand, pointer, or object is a bad loop even if a pixel metric looks acceptable.

Deliver clearly named files with format and timestamp or selection noted. Verify every still and loop opens, fits its dimensions, and represents the video faithfully.