Question
- Where do video thumbnails actually appear? What are video thumbnails useful for?
- Why can't I see my video thumbnails?
- Why don't my students see video thumbnails?
Solution
Because of how the Course Player tracks video progress, and the default selection of our Video Autoplay feature, your students will rarely see video thumbnails within Video Lessons. They are currently most useful for videos you are using as part of Text Lessons, or that you want to use elsewhere on your Thinkific site, e.g. as a promotion or sample on a Landing Page.
Video Thumbnails Within a Video Lesson
When Video Autoplay is enabled on a course, video lessons will begin playing automatically, bypassing the video thumbnail completely.
The Course Player also remembers student progress on videos, so even when Video Autoplay is disabled, if the student has watched any of the video at all, the player will start them where they left off when they come back to the lesson - again, bypassing the video thumbnail.
The only time the thumbnail will be visible to a student is the first time they load the Video Lesson, or if they never click 'play' and then later return to the lesson - and only in a course with Autoplay disabled.
Video Thumbnails Outside of a Video Lesson
If you want to include videos as part of a larger lesson, such as a Text Lesson, then the thumbnail will be visible there; the video will not autoplay, and it will reset to the beginning every time the student enters the lesson.
Video thumbnails can also be useful for videos in your video library that will appear outside of the Course Player, e.g. on a Landing page on your website. Videos on these pages will not autoplay, or remember the viewer's progress, so having an attractive or informative thumbnail is usually a good idea.