Forum Discussion
Is it possible to upload a thumbnail to a video in Rise 360?
I've uploaded a video, but the thumbnail appears to be the first frame of the video, and I can't change this without changing the first frame.
This isn't ideal, as the video has an animated logo opener, so the first frame is just a white background. I'd prefer to upload a thumbnail of the full logo instead, while keeping the video as is.
I've tried an alternative where I've uploaded the video to YouTube, added a thumbnail through the YouTube publish process, then added this to the Rise course via the embedded video option, but the thumbnail appears blurry for some reason.
Any solutions or workarounds would be appreciated.
46 Replies
Bumping this, as well. I found people asking for this as far back as 5 years ago. Every video I add has a blank white screen as a thumbnail. Setting a video thumbnail seems like basic video player functionality. Why has this not yet been addressed?
Every video I add to Rise has a perfect thumbnail?
Having created the mp4 in Storyline, it is annoying that the first slide doesn't display, as other mentioned above. I have audio with closed captions, and if I edit in Camtasia to get the first frame to show the same as the first slide, then I lose (or will have to re-do) the ccs again. This is really not ideal.
Bumping this one up too. Surprised this hasn't been addressed other than by workarounds.
Agree, I would also like to see this feature as well. Not being able to edit the video thumbnail is not ideal.
Agreed, I would most definitely like to see this as a feature as well.
I found a work around, that worked for me.
- I basically uploaded my video to Canva.
- Took a screenshot of the first frame and uploaded that as well.
- Then place the screenshot before the video on the timeline.
- I made the screenshot 0.2 instead of 1.0 seconds long.
- I added a transition (Flow) between the two to make it smooth.
- I also removed the black screen that appears before the video starts.
- It transitioned very nicely.
I downloaded the video to my device and uploaded it to Rise360 and the screenshot showed as my thumbnail/video cover.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for sharing this. This is essentially the same workaround which could be done using Camtasia. However, I would really appreciate if I did not have to use some external tool for some basic step like that. Maybe this feature could be added in the future? It looks much more professional if the video shows some related thumbnail before starting it.
Hi Shimell!
Thanks for sharing that workaround with the community! I'm sure other users discovering this thread will find the steps very useful.
Have a great rest of your week!
We also really miss the option to set a thumbnail! Would be great to have this option in the future
This is an issue we also are struggling with - having a blank image / no meaningful thumbnail when embedding a video looks very unprofessional and not user friendly at all. I would also appreciate updates on that, thanks.
Have there been any updates to this? I uploaded my own videos and the video cover doesn't even show up. The videos are black with a white play button in the middle. I really need to be able to add my own video cover.
Jose, I'd like to add one other observation, if I may.
The Rise360 course I built in January was published into Totara on 1/18/24. At that time, the embedded videos looked fine, and they still look fine. However, eight days ago around 2/20/24, this pixelating started happening in Ries360 in this very same course. I was going to republish an updated version of this course, but could not because of the video presentations being blurry. So we are still using the version that was published on 1/18/24 in Totara until we figure out why the video in Rise360 are blurry.
So what happened on 2/20/24 with Rise360? Why did my embedded videos look perfectly fine for about 3 weeks straight, and were and are still fine since the course was published on 1/18/2024 into Totara? How are the embed links from Kaltura be working fine in a published version of my course but not working well in the unpublished version of the course?
I did try publishing the course again to see if perhaps that would clear up the issue.
It was so strange. 8 days ago. I was working in my course, and suddenly the intro video went blurry but the other 33 videos looked fine. Then over the course of 30-60 seconds, all the videos went blurry.
I guess, because of what I'm describing, I'm not convinced Kaltura is the problem, since the very same embed links are working fine in a published version of this same course.
Don't know if these details are helpful. But as others have suggested, a thumbnail generator in Rise360 might be nice.
Again, thanks for reaching out. Rise360 is a fun and flexible product to work with.
Hi Kevin,
Nothing major was introduced to Rise 360 involving embedded content, but I do find it strange that your embedded videos became blurry all of a sudden. If republishing your videos doesn't fix the quality issues, please open a case with our support team here so we can take a closer look at what happened.
