Viewers can watch video previews on the Home, Subscriptions, and Trending tabs. They can also see them on watch pages and in search results. Previews are only available on select computer browsers (Chrome versions 32 and up and Opera version 19 and up).
Video previews are available for most videos that are longer than 30 seconds. If the viewer has the inline player turned off, video previews are automatically turned on for eligible videos. They may not be added to all videos that are longer than 30 seconds.
We use several criteria, including video topic and content, to figure out what videos can have previews. If you don't see a preview for a video within 2 days, the video isn't currently eligible.
Use video previews
A clip from the first half of your video is automatically selected to be displayed as the video preview.
Even if a video has a video preview, you should still customize your video thumbnails. Thumbnails appear when the video preview isn't active.