YouTube Video and Thumbnail Hacks

I must apologise. It appears I’ve not followed through on my promise about using a few methods with your YouTube videos and thumbnails to make all you guys..... epic. 

I was going to incorporate those methods with information about software and playlists etc.

But I’ve decided not to do that as it’s a tad complicated both in the concepts and implementation. Instead I’ll give you only information that is actionable, effective and simple in application. 

I have three types I use, transparent png images in the videos, invisible text boxes in the thumbnails and a secondary audio channel in the videos.

To keep things simple, let’s forget the audio. What I’ll show you now will give you all a huge advantage. 

So let’s start on the text boxes placed on your desired thumbnail. 

We use text boxes because all the text placed within the box is uniformly adjusted when you adjust the size of the box. Any decent graphics software can do this, I think Canva would work for this as well. 

Text Boxes For Thumbnails:

YouTube thumbnails are jpeg/jpg, so we will assume you have already produced your desired background image, whatever that may be, and add your text you want visible, be that a Call To Action, Business Name etc. 

Now...let’s add those text boxes that just seem to disappear to humans eyes. 

Setup your first text box, and add your keywords, say 25 of them, as an example. Once added the text box will get substantially bigger. Reduce it to cover the top left hand quadrant of your thumbnail. 

Note: I use everything from keywords to latitude and longitude, addresses, anything you want to add to this thumbnail to get it to rank. 

Now setup another text box, add another 25 keywords. Again reduce that new box to cover the top right quadrant of the thumbnail. 

Make another two text boxes to cover the bottom left and right of the thumbnail. That’s another 25 keywords each. You now have 100 keywords in 4 visible text boxes. 

At this stage your thumbnail will look a complete mess, but don’t panic. 

You could add much more in the way of text information if you desire. 

Now, go back to the first text box you made. Reduce the opacity until you cannot see it. Then do that to the other 3.

You can now render that completed image to be your thumbnail in jpeg format. 

It’s that easy. You can not see the text boxes but they are still there, embedded within the image at pixel level. Google and YouTube can understand it quite easily. 

Now let’s produce some....

Transparent PNG Images:

These we will use in the video itself. These transparent images will be placed in the A Video channel, so that they are above all other video information. 

I make my images the same size as my video size. 

Here you can go wild and produce as many images as you want. 

You simply setup a text box like previously. Add your keywords or any other information you require into the text box. Adjust the box to the correct size. Reduce the opacity so it is just visible, you should really have to look for the information. 

Save that image as a PNG. That’s one done, now go crazy and produce many more with all the extra information you want added to the video. 

Let’s now assume you have 20 PNG images. Open your favourite video editing software. Add your video to the second video channel. Add all the new transparent PNG images to the A or primary video channel. 

Remember with images you can stretch them longer or smaller on the timeline to fit. You can use the same images again in sequences. 

Once you have finished setting everything up and you are happy with your video, render it in the format you require. Those transparent PNG images have now blended together with the other video and you have a new unique video. 

All that’s now required is proper titles for the thumbnail and video. Extensive metadata can be added to both, and as they say, your off to the races. 

These two techniques work very well. You will be pleasantly surprised. Just make sure your thumbnail is worthy of all this work. 

That’s it guys, I think I’ve fulfilled all my promises to you all. 

It’s 2.35am here on Christmas Eve morning. I’ve organised a huge party tomorrow on Christmas Day for all those old forgotten people that meals on wheels look after. So I don’t think I’ll be sleeping until tomorrow evening. 

Cheers guys. It’s been a pleasure serving.