Reduce costs
Lower bandwidth and storage expenses without compromising quality.
Submit your video
Send a video file to the /v1/start_encode2 endpoint and add smart_thumbnail as an output format in your job request.
Smart Thumbnails
Automatically select the best frame for maximum viewer engagement
Overview
What It Is
Smart Thumbnails use machine learning to analyze your video and automatically select the most engaging frame for preview images. Instead of random frame extraction or manual thumbnail creation, the API identifies faces, compositions, colors, and scenes that maximize click-through rates. For platforms managing thousands or millions of videos, this means better engagement without manual oversight.
Coming Soon
Process
How It Works
AI analyzes frames
The model scans multiple frames across the video duration, evaluating composition, brightness, contrast, and visual hierarchy.
Select the best frame
The API identifies the frame most likely to drive engagement based on human visual preferences.
Extract and deliver
Receive the thumbnail as an image file or directly integrate it into your metadata.
Overview
Why Smart Thumbnails
Save time
Automate complex processing that would take hours manually.
Scale effortlessly
Handle thousands of videos with the same API call.
Integrate in minutes
Simple REST API with comprehensive SDKs and documentation.
Use Cases
Who Uses Smart Thumbnails
VOD Platforms
ScenarioA streaming service with 50,000 titles needs thumbnails for discovery pages and recommendation feeds. Manual creation takes weeks; random frames often show logos or dark scenes that don't drive clicks.
Deploy Smart Thumbnails across your entire catalog and increase click-through rates by up to 30% without additional production work.
UGC Platforms
ScenarioA user-generated content platform processes 10,000 uploads daily. Most creators don't optimize thumbnails, leading to poor discoverability and lower view counts.
Automatically apply professional thumbnails to every upload, reducing content visibility gaps by 25% and improving creator revenue.
Social / Creator Tools
ScenarioA short-form content editor needs to generate shareable clips with eye-catching thumbnails in seconds. Creators want to maximize impressions without deep editing skills.
Generate gallery-ready thumbnails instantly alongside clip export, cutting post-production time from hours to minutes.
Tutorial
How to Use Smart Thumbnails
Watch a quick walkthrough showing how to configure and use Smart Thumbnails through the Qencode dashboard and API.
Tutorial Video Coming Soon
For Developers
Technical Reference
| API Method | POST /v1/start_encode2 after creating a task with POST /v1/create_task. Add an smart_thumbnail output to the transcoding job. |
| Key Parameters | source, encoder_version: "2", output: "smart_thumbnail", width, height, total, image_format, optional quality. |
| Supported Input Formats | Any video format — MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, HLS, and 200+ others |
| Supported Output Formats | Smart thumbnail image output in jpg or png. Use image_format to choose the image type. |
| Limits & Constraints | quality applies when image_format is jpg. total controls how many smart thumbnails are generated. |
Request Example
Smart Thumbnails configuration inside a transcoding job request.
{
"query": {
"source": "https://your-storage.com/source.mov",
"encoder_version": "2",
"format": [
{
"output": "smart_thumbnail",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080,
"total": 5,
"image_format": "jpg",
"quality": 95
}
]
}
}Copy this payload and use it with your API key to test Smart Thumbnails on your own video.
View Smart Thumbnails TutorialPricing
What It Costs
Usage-Based Pricing
Smart Thumbnails are available for all Qencode users. Pricing is based on the transcoding cost and includes an additional fee for each Smart Thumbnail job.
Explore More
Related Features
Smart Cropping
Adapt videos to any aspect ratio with intelligent frame detection
Thumbnails
Traditional thumbnail extraction with manual frame selection
Video Intelligence
Extract metadata, objects, and scenes from video content
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Please send us a message if you have a question or Schedule a call for a demo to discuss your integration.
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