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  1. Products
  2. Stream
  3. Play video
  4. Display thumbnails

Display thumbnails

​​ Use Case 1: Generating a thumbnail on-the-fly

A thumbnail from your video can be generated using a special link where you specify the time from the video you’d like to get the thumbnail from.

https://customer-f33zs165nr7gyfy4.cloudflarestream.com/6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957/thumbnails/thumbnail.jpg?time=1s&height=270

Example of thumbnail image generated from example video

Using the poster query parameter in the embed URL, you can set a thumbnail to any time in your video. If signed URLs are required, you must use a signed URL instead of video UIDs.

<iframe
  src="https://customer-f33zs165nr7gyfy4.cloudflarestream.com/6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957/iframe?poster=https%3A%2F%2Fcustomer-f33zs165nr7gyfy4.cloudflarestream.com%2F6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957%2Fthumbnails%2Fthumbnail.jpg%3Ftime%3D%26height%3D600"
  style="border: none; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;"
  allow="accelerometer; gyroscope; autoplay; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture;"
  allowfullscreen="true"

></iframe>

Supported URL attributes are:

  • time (default 0s, configurable) time from the video e.g. 8m, 5m2s
  • height (default 640)
  • width (default 640)
  • fit (default crop) to clarify what to do when requested height and width doesn’t match the original upload, which should be one of:
    • crop cut parts of the video that doesn’t fit in the given size
    • clip preserve the entire frame and decrease the size of the image within given size
    • scale distort the image to fit the given size
    • fill preserve the entire frame and fill the rest of the requested size with black background

​​ Use Case 2: Set the default thumbnail timestamp using the API

By default, the Stream Player sets the thumbnail to the first frame of the video. You can change this on a per-video basis by setting the “thumbnailTimestampPct” value using the API:

curl -X POST \

-H "Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>" \

-d '{"thumbnailTimestampPct": 0.5}' \
https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/<ACCOUNT_ID>/stream/<VIDEO_UID>

thumbnailTimestampPct is a value between 0.0 (the first frame of the video) and 1.0 (the last frame of the video). For example, you wanted the thumbnail to be the frame at the half way point of your videos, you can set the thumbnailTimestampPct value to 0.5. Using relative values in this way allows you to set the default thumbnail even if you or your users’ videos vary in duration.

​​ Use Case 3: Generating animated thumbnails

Stream supports animated GIFs as thumbnails. Viewing animated thumbnails does not count toward billed minutes delivered or minutes viewed in Stream Analytics.

​​ Animated GIF thumbnails

https://customer-f33zs165nr7gyfy4.cloudflarestream.com/6b9e68b07dfee8cc2d116e4c51d6a957/thumbnails/thumbnail.gif?time=1s&height=200&duration=4s

Animated gif example, generated on-demand from Cloudflare Stream

Supported URL attributes for animated thumbnails are:

  • time (default 0s) time from the video e.g. 8m, 5m2s
  • height (default 640)
  • width (default 640)
  • fit (default crop) to clarify what to do when requested height and width doesn’t match the original upload, which should be one of:
    • crop cut parts of the video that doesn’t fit in the given size
    • clip preserve the entire frame and decrease the size of the image within given size
    • scale distort the image to fit the given size
    • fill preserve the entire frame and fill the rest of the requested size with black background
  • duration (default 5s)
  • fps (default 8)