How to set ..ehhmm... "cover art"?

Suggestion
1

When a video file appears in Windows explorer or in iTunes, one frame of the video is displayed as a “thumbnail” for the file - just like “cover art” is displayed for audio files. For lack of the correct term let me call this “cover art” for video as well.
My videos usually start with a text that fades in/out to a black background, then the video begins. The cover art I see however is definitely not the first frame of the exported video (which would be black) but it seems to be a frame of the foootage starting after the title.
I know how to set this cover art using a tag editor like MP3Tag, however, I’d like to know if there is a way in Shotcut to easily

  1. select a frame
  2. declare as cover art so that
  3. after export, the selected frame is displayed as “cover” ?
1 Like
2

There is no way to set it in Shotcut.

Read this prior post to learn more:

3

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i cover.jpg -map 0 -map 1 -c copy -disposition:v:1 attached_pic output.mp4

ffmpeg is included with Shotcut. I just tried it, and it worked. Maybe YouTube automatically uses it. Maybe we can automate it some day.

4

Thanks all for your replies.
As I wrote, I know how to do it with an external tool (MP3Tag has been my favorite for years), but it would be nice if there was a simple way to do this while you’re in the editing process in Shotcut anyway.
Maybe handing over some parameters from melt to ffmpeg or the like …

If no specific “cover” is set, do we know which frame is picked for display in VLC, iTunes etc. - I mean, is this taken from a specific location in the file (as per specification) or is it totally up to the rendering tool (VLC, …)?
There would be some logic in picking the first frame, but obviously it is not so.

5

I agree so I moved this to Suggestion and accepted it. I

2 Likes