Generating Video Preview Clips

Filters and effects

Video

Marketing

Advanced

Creating a dynamic and engaging animated video preview (as opposed to a static image) can have a lot of benefits:

Improves the ability to captures a user’s attention for the content
More clearly demonstrates that there is video content available
Provides several preview clips, allowing the user to decide if the video is relevant pre-click

Compare two different preview options to see which is more eye-catching and engaging:

Static Image Preview	Dynamic Video Preview

Here’s the basics of how this is created in Cloudinary:

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Upload a video
Set your total duration for the preview video you want to create
Layer on additional copies of the video with the corresponding beginning/end of each clip
Set the desired dimensions of the preview video
Remove the audio channel to save on page weight

And that’s it!

Some other options:

Add a quick fade between preview clips
Add a text or image overlay explicitly telling people to click to play the full video
Use the upload response from the main video to capture total video length, and then generate the preview clip’s start/stop timing.