What size for thumbs?

[KGATV]

I use 1280 x 720, because that's what came up on their support page.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/138008?hl=en

 

[Lilikoi Juice]

youtube.com/yt/playbook/thumbnails.html




YouTube TN Optimization says 640x360px
Bigger is so useless when you see the size of the thumbnails on the suggestions.

Oh, haha, I thought you were meaning to make it 160 x 90.

Anyways, I want the image itself to be high quality--not just on the computer screen. 640 x 360 is too small of a canvas to work with for me.

 

[unknown_user908234902]

1280 x 720 is my preferred size. I just make sure to export as JPG.

 

[JustSomeGermanDude]

youtube.com/yt/playbook/thumbnails.html




YouTube TN Optimization says 640x360px
Bigger is so useless when you see the size of the thumbnails on the suggestions.

Nope it does not.
It says:

• Clear, in-focus, hi-resolution (640px x 360px min., 16:9 aspect ratio)

and

Upload high-resolution thumbnails so they appear crisp and clear wherever viewers happen to see them.

 

[scifiriot]

i do 640x360 and its perfect.

Why 1920x1080 ? ROFL thumbnails are something like 160x90px

Thumbnails get blown up to whatever the embedded player size is off of YouTube, so using a bigger size like 1920x1080 at ~300dpi can come in handy. The trick is to balance how it looks when it's big but still make it visible/readable when it's small.

 

[Brodie]

I usually use the 720p (1280 x 720) dimensions or the 1080p (1280 x 720) dimensions, they work really well

 

[Tonio]

Well let me help you out here is the best answer and if my other fellow yttalkers said the thumbnail size should be 1280w and 720h also thumbnails cannot be bigger than 2mb

 

[TheMadTireShow]

Well, I have been using 600 X 338 for many years and never have seen my thumbs get saturated on any screen size or player size.

 

[unknown_user908234902]

Well, I have been using 600 X 338 for many years and never have seen my thumbs get saturated on any screen size or player size.

Really? Go throw your embed code into practiceboard or something. There's definitely a difference. The higher the better more often than not. Even if it is seen as over compensating.

 

[SDFgamer]

I use 1820x1000 in GIMP and it works fine