Comments on: Suggestion For YouTube

By: snappleturtle

snappleturtle — Tue, 15 May 2007 07:44:46 +0000

how does youtube pick the still image for each video anyways, do they just pick a random image from your vid?

By: blindman

blindman — Mon, 14 May 2007 01:49:09 +0000

Re: poster frame, there is good info here:
How To Set Up The Right Poster Frame In YouTube
http://www.squidoo.com/youtubeframe/

By: How To Change Your YouTube Video Thumbnail Image? | Jim Kukral Online Marketing Consulting 1-888-BLOG-BIZ

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:08:33 +0000

[...] This post from Crunchnotes, and the comments, are postulating that it is the center/middle of the video. That’s what I did above. However, YouTube says here that it’s not possible. How do I change the default thumbnail for my video? While we may add this feature in the future, there is currently no way to change the screen shot that we capture from your videos for thumbnails. [...]

By: Charles Kirkland

Charles Kirkland — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:53:11 +0000

I totally agree with you on this. Half the time I’m not totally sure what I going to see. It would make sense to have a clear jpg or gif that showed what the video was going to be about.

Thanks
Charles Kirkland
http://www.shed-plan.com

By: AntiB

AntiB — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 19:17:39 +0000

Idea sounds nice, but as soon as someone will be allowed to customize the poster frame of the uploaded video, he probably might decide to use much attractive but unrelated image just to gain more attention.

I think there’s another solution possible. When automatically creating poster image, YouTube can shrink it using bilinear algorithm (twice, for example) — and the quality of image will grow because mpeg(jpeg) artifacts will become smaller. Because of shrinked image takes less space on the screen this free space can be used to add title and subtitle.

Another option might be best of all. Youtube divides video length to 4 (or 16) parts and creates series of corresponding keyframes — storyboard. Then these keyframe images are tiled on the poster frame. This presentation can become more effective than current one because user can view storyboard and know what to expect from video.

What do you think?

By: C-Slim

C-Slim — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 00:32:40 +0000

http://www.sevenload.com looks nice but it’s in all German as soon as you click anywhere!
Needs translating.

By: Jeremy Stratton

Jeremy Stratton — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:40:01 +0000

It’s getting pretty annoying the way people are taking advantage of Youtubes system for capturing picture previews of the video. They take the screencap from about the middle of the video. Youtubers that have figured this out are inserting quick flashes of pictures that have nothing to do with their video and that garner more clicks(I.E. top models).

By: Danny Geekbooks

Danny Geekbooks — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:56:23 +0000

After uploading my first video on sheds to both YouTube and Google Video, I gave up on YouTube. The quality just wasn’t there. It didn’t take all that long to figure out the “poster frame” for GV. I was able to hit it in my subsequent 2 minute epics.

By: Rene

Rene — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 10:48:26 +0000

I am using a website called http://www.sevenload.com. Not only do they allow you to pick a thumbnail from the video but I also found the overall quality of the site much better than YouTube.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 05:17:36 +0000

Agreed, the homepage of YouTube is rarely enticing - the thumbnails are almost always bland. Whilst uploading an image might not be the best idea (due to the reasons above) perhaps being able to scroll through the image and select a frame would be a better, while not entirely perfect, alternative.