Using video as feature image?

Using Ghost
1

I’m new to Ghost (using Ghost Pro) and would like to be able to post videos alongside other content.

When I upload a video, I would like a still preview of the video to appear as the feature image on the post.

So far, I have managed to insert a video in a post using the very simple method of posting a YouTube link.

But the post appeared without any feature image. As a workaround I took a screenshot from the video and uploaded it as the feature image.

However, there are 2 problems:

  1. The video itself appears with no preview - it just looks like a grey box until you click play.

  2. When the post is open, the feature image appears above the video, so there are two of the same thing.

Here is a link to the post so you can see what I mean: https://future-origins.ghost.io/are-we-just-boat-geeks/

Is there any simple way to have the video itself function as the feature image?

I am not a developer so am looking for a solution that doesn’t involve coding, if possible.

2

Welcome :wave:

  1. This has to do with your YouTube video setting. Try setting a thumbnail in YouTube itself.
  2. The featured image and the video don’t have a connection within Ghost. You’ll need to set the featured image separately from adding the video.

This site will make things a little bit easier for you by grabbing the thumbnail for you as an image: http://www.get-youtube-thumbnail.com/. But it doesn’t get around the issue of repeating the thumbnail. You might just need to create a separate featured image apart from the video (maybe two different screen captures?)

3

Thanks very much for the clarifications, Ryan.

  1. I had set a thumbnail in YouTube but I think maybe the video hadn’t finished uploading when I posted the link on Ghost, so that was why there was just a grey box. I’ve now updated the thumbnail and it works fine.

  2. I think it’s probably better to just set a featured image that is completely different from the video, to avoid confusion (currently the featured image looks like a video, so people might mistakenly click on it and expect it to play). But then the featured image won’t let people know that this post is a video. Perhaps I will just add [VIDEO] before the post title so they know what to expect.

4

Awesome! Glad you got it sorted.

One other option for indicating that a post is a video is to use a tag. If you set the first tag to “video,” then that tag will be visible on the homepage.