Thumbnail Feedback Is screen capture bad?

[Gareth GIttins]

As my videos are me performing, guitars and vocals I usually scroll through the video and find a shot where you can see how much I am putting into the performance and then add titles. Is this considered lazy or bad practice? I do sometimes have interesting backgrounds already in the video, but sometimes its just the studio.

 

[Beanie Draws]

I wouldn't necessarily call it "Bad" or lazy, but you CAN do a little photo shoot separate to the video. In 5 years time you might look back and go "nah they were bad thumbnails" but the beauty is that you can change your thumbnails out at any time.

I'd be more looking at your thumbnail CTR, that will tell you more than asking if a screen capture is bad. If you're getting high CTR, then it might not be that bad because it's getting a click, if it has low CTR then perhapse you might want to consider doing a dedecated photoshoot of poses and expressions to take for your thumbs.

 

[kitchen c/o ammama]

just the screenshot would not be considered as " high quality " thumbnails in the good practices.

as @Beanie Draws mentioned, have a separate photo session probably after recording. Have your thumbnails planned before hand i.e where would you like it to be taken, etc and go ahead.

 

[itstom]

Just had a look at your thumbnails and I wouldn't say your thumbnails are bad... just be mindful to set the size of your thumbnail to 1280x720pixels.
I've seen couple of thumbnails where people on them are a bit squished as you've pulled two photos next to each other so bear that in mind.
I'd also say your latest one(with fire) was a good attempt at trying out something different but I don't think for your niche that thumbnail is working out(also comparing previous video performance vs that one).

If you are pulling in "screenshots" from your videos make sure to find frames that are not blurry and also try to not squish people as you put them into thumbnail
It also seems that thumbnails with multiple photos perform better but that could also be due to the choice of songs

Keep up the good work

 

[Gareth GIttins]

OK, lots of great tips here. I think I will have a play around with the last video as its been going a bit slow, even though I thought it would have more impact and try to de-clutter and stop squishing. Ths could explain why my CTR is a bit up and down. I have some new studio lights so I will look at doing a few separate shots on the next video with some better lighting and experiment with that also. Thank you again, great advice.

 

[itstom]

OK, lots of great tips here. I think I will have a play around with the last video as its been going a bit slow, even though I thought it would have more impact and try to de-clutter and stop squishing. Ths could explain why my CTR is a bit up and down. I have some new studio lights so I will look at doing a few separate shots on the next video with some better lighting and experiment with that also. Thank you again, great advice.

Just don't overdo it or over-engineer it
Your videos seem to be doing fine at least by view counts keep exploring stuff you can do to make them slightly better and keep checking analytics to see which ones perform better and which not(don't base this solely on views count, do check CTR as you've mentioned).

 

[Gareth GIttins]

OK, sounds like good advice, it is easy to get carried away.

 

[kusuri]

to me its looks awsome

 

[goldfries]

I use screenshots as thumbnails all the time, if your video is 1080P then your thumbnail would be 1920 x 1080 which is plenty detailed for something that small.

 

[EvaWar]

Screenshots are ok I think, if get creative with them. Most of my thumbnails have a screenshot in them with some modifications. You could look at something like remove.bg to remove backgrounds from behind you and open up some options. I tried it the other day and used one of the photos in my latest thumbnail.

 

[HeatherPsyD]

that's what i do for my thumbnails. can't afford a camera, so my iPhone will have to make do. i wonder if people can truly tell the difference

 

[HenryBR]

The that I see it if the image looks good with relevance to the video. Go with it!