Editing & export

Make a thumbnail

Every video has a Thumbnail page, opened from Make a thumbnail on the project overview. It unlocks once the video's reference images exist, and it is optional: a video exports with or without one. Thumbnails are 1280×720.

Generate one

Describe the thumbnail in the box (who is in it, what they are doing, the mood) and press Generate. It is drawn in your channel's art style and costs credits. The sliders icon beside Generate opens the prompt editor, where you can change the model and the prompt.

Press Reference to hand it images from the video, so the thumbnail shows the same characters and places:

• ·Characters, environments and objects from the video.
• ·Scene images from the storyboard.
• ·Cut-outs and earlier thumbnails for this video.
• ·Thumbnails from other videos on the channel, to keep a series looking alike.

Start without AI

• ·Upload an image to use a thumbnail you already have.
• ·Blank canvas to design one by hand in the thumbnail editor.

Edit a thumbnail

Press Edit on any thumbnail to open it in the thumbnail editor. There you can add text, shapes and images from the video as layers, move and resize them, and use Fix a spot to describe a change to one part of the image. Preview on YouTube shows how it looks at the sizes YouTube displays it, in light and dark mode. The editor needs a laptop or desktop screen.

Choose and download

Each thumbnail has Download. You can keep as many versions as you like; deleting one removes it for good. With more than one, the newest is the video's thumbnail unless you press Mark as active on another.