Your poster, your pick

Set your video thumbnail from your own master.
Scrub to the moment you want, and capture it there.

The image on the card is the film until somebody presses play. Here you scrub the file you uploaded and capture the still where you stop, or upload an image you made yourself. This is how to choose one well, how precise the scrubbing actually is, and the three limits worth knowing before you start.

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Updated September 2026

The still that earns the click

Your poster comes from your master,
not from a copy of it.

On a portfolio grid, in a client’s inbox preview, in an embed before anybody presses play, the poster is the film. It is judged in a fraction of a second, at card size, next to five other films. Whatever a machine picked for you is a lottery ticket on that judgement.

Where a still is captured decides what it looks like. Here the scrubber signs and plays the file you uploaded, the same object the player streams. There is no second, smaller rendition of your film in this system and nothing re-encodes it on the way in, so the still that lands on the card carries the grade you exported: your blacks, your halation, your colour. When a host builds a compressed copy of a film for streaming, any still it generates comes out of that copy, with that copy’s banding and that copy’s flattened shadows.

There are two routes to a poster, and they sit next to each other on the film’s page. Capture one out of the film itself, or upload an image you made. Most films want the first. A few want the second, and the section on limits below says exactly which.

0.04 s

One nudge

The step for an arrow key and for the slider alike

1 s

One shift nudge

For crossing a scene without dragging

1600 px

Widest capture

Saved as a JPEG, so plan large hero use around it

Routes to a poster

Capture from the film, or upload your own image

Four steps

Open the film, scrub,
then stop where you like it.

Open the film in your dashboard

Every film has its own management page. The poster controls sit there with the share panel and the player settings, so you can set the still, check the link and copy the embed in one visit.

Choose Pick a frame from the video

The film opens in a scrubber that plays your master. Space plays and pauses. Nothing has been prepared in advance and there is no processing wait, because it is the same file the player uses.

Scrub to the moment you want

Drag the slider for the neighbourhood, then use the arrow keys to nudge in 0.04-second steps and shift with an arrow to move a second at a time. Watch the picture rather than the timecode: the still on screen is the still you will get.

Capture it, or upload your own

Capture saves the frame on screen as the poster and it takes effect at once. If your browser cannot decode that master, or the still you want is not in the film, use Upload an image instead. The button is right beside it.

How precise the scrubbing is

A fixed 0.04-second step,
and what it means at your frame rate.

Worth being straight about this, because it is the part a feature list usually skips. The arrow keys and the slider both move in a step of 0.04 seconds. That is twenty five steps a second. It is a time step, not a frame step: the scrubber does not read the frame rate of your film, so what one nudge means depends on what you shot.

One frame lasts

A 0.04-second nudge covers

In practice

24 fps

0.0417 s

0.96 of a frame

Two nudges occasionallyshow the same picture twice

25 fps

0.04 s

Exactly one frame

One nudge, one frame

30 fps

0.0333 s

1.2 frames

Usually one frame,sometimes two

50 fps

0.02 s

2 frames

Two frames a nudge

60 fps

0.0167 s

2.4 frames

Two frames a nudge,sometimes three

The step is a fixed 0.04 seconds in the scrubber, for the arrow keys and for the slider, measured in the shipped product in September 2026. Shift with an arrow moves a full second. Frame durations are arithmetic: one divided by the frame rate.

So the honest description of this tool is that you scrub to a moment, not to a numbered frame. On a 24 fps film a nudge is a shade shorter than a frame, which means two presses now and then land you on the same picture. On a 60 fps film a nudge crosses two frames and sometimes three, so a fast action beat can slip past you in a single press.

Neither costs you anything if you judge by eye, which is the right way to judge a poster anyway. Nudge back and forth, watch the picture change, and capture where it looks like a photograph you would print. Where a specific numbered frame genuinely matters, and it does for a title card or a beat you already marked in your timeline, export that frame from your editing suite and upload it. That route has no step size at all, and it is one click away from the same panel.

Before you start

Three limits on the capture,
and one of them will surprise you.

The poster is 1600 px wide at most

The captured still is downscaled and saved as a JPEG no wider than 1600 pixels. That is ample for a grid card, a link preview or an embed poster on most screens. It is not enough for a full-bleed hero image across a wide display. If the poster has to hold a large area, export the still from your suite at the size you want and upload it.

Some masters cannot be captured at all

The capture runs on your master, so your browser has to decode it. ProRes, DNxHR and camera RAW are hosted here for client download rather than streaming, because browsers do not decode them. On those films the capture will not run, and the product says so and points you at the upload button. That is the practical answer if your master is ProRes: make the still where the file already opens, in your editing or grading suite, and upload it.

Replacing a film does not update its poster

Upload a new cut over an existing film and the link, every embed, the view count, the password and the film's place on your page all survive untouched. The poster does not follow the file. It still shows a moment from the previous cut until you set a new one, which is the most common way a poster goes stale.

After a recut, in this order

Replace the file, then set the poster again, then check the captions and any timecoded notes, because those also still refer to the cut you just replaced. The whole point of the swap is that the link you already sent keeps working, and a poster from the old cut is the one visible thing that gives away that the film underneath changed. There is more on what the swap keeps and what it deletes in replace a video without changing the link.

Choosing the frame

The first frame is almost never
the right one.

A poster is a still photograph doing the work of a film. What reads well in motion and what reads well held still are different things, and a still gets no second chance to explain itself. These are the six judgements that decide whether a card gets clicked.

Start somewhere other than the head

Films open on black, on a fade, on a slate, on an empty room before anyone walks into it. Any automatic pick taken near the start of a file lands in that dead air. Go into the body of the film and look for a moment you would be happy to print.

Faces, and where they are looking

A face reads at card size when almost nothing else does, and eyes give the card a direction. The risk is the in-between frame: mid-blink, mid-word, mouth half open. What passes unnoticed at twenty four frames a second becomes the whole photograph when it is held.

Motion blur is the trap

A whip pan or a hand crossing the lens looks alive in motion and looks like a smear when it is frozen. Find the moment just before or just after the movement instead. This is where nudging earns its keep: step through the shot until the smear resolves into shapes.

Contrast, not only composition

The card is small and often sits on a bright screen next to other cards. A frame that is beautiful and very dark collapses into a rectangle of murk at that size. Prefer separation, or one strong shape that survives being shrunk.

Type on the frame is allowed to help

In a directory of thumbnails, a poster carrying the film's title or the client's name gives a reader something to hold onto that a pretty frame does not. If you want that, build the card in your suite over a still you chose, then upload it as the poster.

Pick them as a set, not one at a time

Posters sit next to each other on your page. Choose them together: similar exposure, similar crowding, similar treatment. A grid assembled one film at a time over two years looks like a grid of accidents, and a viewer reads that before they read any single image.

Upload an image instead when

The master is ProRes, DNxHR or camera RAW, so the browser cannot decode it. Or the poster has to be wider than 1600 pixels. Or you want a title card, a logo lockup or type across the frame. Or you want the still to carry a treatment the film itself does not have, made where you grade. Same panel, same two buttons, and whichever you set last is the one that shows.

Where the poster lands

On your page, on the card,
and inside every embed.

The poster you set is what your portfolio grid shows before a visitor hovers a card, what an embed on a client’s site displays before playback begins, and what a link preview tends to reach for. One image, several jobs, which is why it is worth two minutes rather than twenty seconds.

Layout changes how much of that image anybody sees. A film tagged Hero runs the full width of your page, where composition and contrast carry a long way. Films tagged Standard sit three across, where a face or one strong shape survives and fine detail does not. Choose the frame for the size the film will be shown at, and if you promote a film from Standard to Hero later, look at its poster again at the new size before you leave it. How the tags build the page is covered in video portfolio hosting for filmmakers.

Questions

Frequently asked

Where do I set the thumbnail?

On the film's own page in your dashboard. Two buttons sit together there: Pick a frame from the video, which opens a scrubber on your master, and Upload an image, which takes a still you made yourself. You can switch between them as often as you like, and the newest choice wins.

How precise is the scrubbing?

The scrubber moves in a fixed step of 0.04 seconds, which is twenty five steps a second, and holding shift with an arrow key moves a full second instead. The step is not read from your film's frame rate, so at 24 fps a nudge is slightly shorter than one frame and at 60 fps it crosses a little over two. In practice you nudge until the picture on screen is the one you want, then capture it there.

Is the poster taken from my original file?

Yes. The scrubber plays the file you uploaded, and nothing re-encodes your film in between. The still carries the grade you exported rather than a compressed copy of it.

How big is the captured image?

It is saved as a JPEG no wider than 1600 pixels. For a grid card, a share preview or an embed poster that is ample. For a full-width hero on a large display it is not, so export a still at the size you need and upload that instead.

The capture did not work on my film. Why?

Capture depends on your browser decoding the master. ProRes, DNxHR and camera RAW are hosted here for download rather than streaming, because browsers do not decode them, so the capture cannot run on those files. Use Upload an image for them: make the still in your editing or grading suite and put it up.

I replaced the film with a new cut. Does the thumbnail follow?

No. Replacing the file keeps the link, every embed already on someone's site, the view count, the privacy setting and the film's place on your page, but the poster still points at the previous cut until you set a new one. Captions and any timecoded notes are in the same position, so treat a recut as three small jobs, not one.

Can I use a title card as the thumbnail?

Yes. Make it in your editing or design suite and upload it as the poster. In a page full of films, a card carrying the title or the client's name often reads faster than a beautiful frame with nothing to name it.

Choose the still yourself

Upload a browser-playable export, set its poster from the master instead of accepting whatever a machine picked, and see how the card reads next to your other films.