How to Edit A Video Thumbnail For Free in Windows 10.

A video thumbnail helps us distinguish between videos on the file explorer. You may want to change or edit a thumbnail of a video you made because the system automatically chooses the thumbnail. The right thumbnail is mostly an image within the video. In this step by step video, you will learn how to edit a video thumbnail in Windows 10.

Step 1

You need to download the program called Tag Editor. Tag Editor enables us to edit the thumbnail of any video easily. You should click on the link below to head to GitHub to download the program as illustrated below.

https://github.com/Martchus/tageditor/releases

Once downloaded, unzip the file to a location you will quickly locate, e.g., the desktop.

Step 2

You need to extract an appropriate image from your video to use as a thumbnail. You can skip to Step 4 if you already have a picture to use as a thumbnail. Play the video via the Movies & Tv app as shown below then hit the pen at the bottom for more options. Choose the ‘Save photo from video’ option as illustrated below.

Step 3

Once the save photos tab opens, you can use the arrows below to navigate to the image frame that best suits your needs. Hit the ‘Save a photo’ button at the top right side of the image to save it.

NB: The image will be saved in the same location as the video.

Step 4

Navigate to the location where you stored the contents of the file you downloaded in Step 1. Navigate to the bin folder which should contain the tageditor.exe file. You now need to copy both the video and the image you will use to edit the video thumbnail.

Step 5

Double press ‘Windows Key + X’ then select ‘Command Prompt(Admin)’ as illustrated below.

Step 6

You now need to navigate to the bin folder that contains the video, image and tageditor.exe file. You need to open the folder in the file explorer and copy the path at the top (highlighted in Step 4). In the command prompt, type cd then paste the path as shown below.

NB: CD is a command used to change directory via the command line.

Step 7

You now need to alter the code below then paste it on the command line then hit Enter to run.

tageditor -s cover=my-cover.jpg –max-padding 125000 -f My_video.mp4

You need to replace the my-cover.jpg with your image and file extension. You also need to change My_video.mp4 with your video name and extension type. Below is an illustration of the altered code as well as the editing process.

Step 8

If you followed all the steps correctly, your video thumbnail should be edited as shown below.

Conclusion

You now know how to replace a video thumbnail for free in Windows 10. Please share your feedback on the comment section below.