[Studio] Select new thumbnail by scrubbing video to desired frame

[Landmark_Coll]

Presently, replacing a thumbnail image for a Studio video requires uploading an image file from the local computer. In nearly every conceivable case, the desired image will be a frame from the video in question. So a user must play the video, pause it on the desired frame, capture the image with some sort of screen capture utility, save that image to a local file, and then upload it.

It would be tremendously helpful to be able to scrub through the already uploaded video to the desired frame and click a button to use that frame as the video's thumbnail.

Michael Keen
Educational Technologist
Landmark College

[Stef_retired]

@Landmark_Coll 

Thanks for sharing this idea. Would you take a moment to read through Add custom thumbnail to shared video in Commons - Canvas Community to see if it essentially captures what you're hoping to be able to do? While that idea doesn't specify selecting a frame from the video as yours does, it shares a similar problem statement and adding your comment to the existing conversation might bring greater attention to it. Having discussions unified in one spot helps both members and product teams actively assess use cases and develop comprehensive solutions.

We'll keep this idea in Moderating status in the meantime. Thanks again!

[Landmark_Coll]

Hi Stefanie,

It looks like the article you linked is a separate issue. What I gather from that article is that there is presently no way at all to select a thumbnail image to a video shared in Commons. My suggestion is for an improved method of selecting a thumbnail image in a user’s library. While I can envision my suggested improvement being extended to videos shared in Commons, I feel the two issues are far enough apart that it might be confusing if they were combined into a single topic.

I hope this is helpful.

Warm regards,

Michael Keen
Educational Technologist
Landmark College

[Stef_retired]

@Landmark_Coll 

Yes, you are correct! Sorry to have caused this confusion (my Monday-after-long-holiday-weekend-brain somehow conflated Studio and Commons). We've moved this idea forward for further discussion.

Thanks 🙂.

[gary-sokolow]

I hope Canvas will seriously consider this idea.  It would be both logical and more streamlined for studio video processing to capture the first frame (often a title slide in a PowerPoint presentation) and use that as the thumbnail for the video.  That way both the instructor and student are clear on what each video is all about, just by looking at the thumbnail. 

[Landmark_Coll]

I would like to "bump" my own suggestion here. The random thumbnails in Studio are quite problematic. As gary-sokolow notes above, the most appropriate thumbnail is frequently a title slide which is very likely to be visible in the first few seconds of a video. If my original idea of allowing a user to scrub through a video is too difficult to implement, suppose the default thumbnail image were always pulled from two seconds into the video. This would probably be appropriate in 90% of all cases.

[dbrace]

"bump"