custom thumbnails for Organizer videos?

[Monte307]

Is it possible to set a custom thumbnail in Elements Organizer for video files???

[Greg_S. · Accepted solution]

As far as I know, there is no tool to set the thumbnail for the video.  Elements seems to use the first frame of the video, so you could always use the Freeze Frame tool  in Premiere and add the screengrab to the beginining of a video. 

Added:  I see that you are a Mac user.  I have no knowledge about Macs.

There are also some utilities that can change the thumbnail for use in Windows Explorer and I presume, but do not know, that the thumbnail will also be read by the Organizer viewer.  You may want to pose your question on the Premiere Elements forum.  Perhaps somebody over there will have a more definitive answer.

[Monte307]

Thanks Greg.  I added an image to the front of the video using iMovie and that was picked up as the thumbnail in Organizer.   I presume  the Freeze Frame tool  in Premiere would have the same results.

[MichelBParis]

A different idea:

You can extract a frame as a jpeg from Premiere Elements or from external tools like VLC media player.

Instead of using this jpeg as a thumbnail, just stack it with the video file. Be sure to set it as the 'top of stack'.

You can add keywords captions etc. to help searches when your video format is limited for metadata.

You can even edit the jpeg to add a title (flatten before saving).

[Greg_S.]

Michel, that is a good thought, but I just tried it and you can't stack a video with a photo file.  If I select the two files, and right click on the jpg, the Stack option is greyed out.  In fact, you cannot even stack two videos.  The option is not even available in the context menu (although Version set is present and greyed out).

[MichelBParis]

Thanks, Greg, I stand corrected.

That idea only works to work around the thumbnail limitation for big sized photos.