WordPressTV video thumbnail selector has stopped working

[nilovelez]

WordPressTV has a feature that allows moderators to upload/capture/change the thumbnail assigned to a video.

Usually you click on the link "To change the default thumbnail image, go here and select Edit Thumbnail." while editing a video. That brings up the "Attachments details" modal window with a video preview which usually has a "Select thumbnail" button.

A couple of days ago, the button to select the thumbnail has disappeared and now there is no way to manually assign a thumbnail to a video.

[mrfoxtalbot]

I can confirm I can replicate the issue. I think @dd32 has been looking into it :)

[sumitsingh]

Hey team,

I have checked and see issue too. Also many video approved without updating thumbnail on TV yet. So any progress about this issue??

Thank you🙏

[obenland]

@nilovelez Is this the thumbnail selector you're referring to? It was removed in February of 2025, which wouldn't line up with "A couple of days ago" in Oct 2025 though.

[nilovelez]

link to open attachment settings

[nilovelez]

missing button

[nilovelez]

Hi @obenland

No, I'm afraid that is not the case. With our usual workflow, we click on the "go here and select Edit Thumbnail" link:

And then we click on the "Edit button" on the player to pick a frame or upload a image. That button is missing.

[nilovelez]

missing button (correct image)

[nilovelez]

Sorry, I uploaded the same image twice. The last one shows the missing button position

[obenland]

I see, thanks for that pointer.

The Calypso screen being linked to was removed in favor of native wp-admin media management. The poster image selector is available in the VideoPress block in the Block Editor, so that change wasn't seen as a regression. WP.tv however is a bit of a special case, to where there it (still) uses the Classic editor and this workflow is not available.

I'm not sure there's what the best way to fix that would be. Porting the editor integrations into the Block Editor and switching to that?

[nilovelez]

I am doing some experiments on a test site based on your information.

The block setting for selecting a poster image is not a valid replacement as is only shows an images from the media library without updating it in VideoPress

But pulling from that thread, I have arrived to the Jepack VideoPress settings page (/wp-admin/admin.php?page=jetpack-videopress), and there you can upload a thumbnail or pick it from a video frame

I have to make a few more tests, but I think I can propose a temporal fix consisting in enabling Jetpack VideoPress in the WPTV site and updating the "go here and select the thumbnail" link

[nilovelez]

The Jetpack VideoPress thumbnail picker

[obenland]

I have arrived to the Jepack VideoPress settings page (/wp-admin/admin.php?page=jetpack-videopress), and there you can upload a thumbnail or pick it from a video frame

I'm afraid that UI unavailable on WordPress.tv, at least for now (Did I mention the site is special? 🙂 ).

The VideoPress block has a section where you can upload an image, select an image from the media library, or pick a frame from the video. (See Screenshot 2026-03-03 at 8.42.19 AM.png​) You wouldn't even have to leave the Editor.

But it's up to you. Also happy to wait and see if the VideoPress Dashboard becomes available.

[nilovelez]

Ok, I've located the option you mention. It will be a great solution when when have a block-based WPTV site, but that might still take some time.

Anyway it is great to know that we will be able to migrate WPTV without having much problems on the VideoPress site.

I'll keep you posted once we test Jetpack VideoPress

[obenland]

It will be a great solution when when have a block-based WPTV site, but that might still take some time.

Can you tell me more about that? What keeps it from using blocks?

[nilovelez]

Right now the process is quite... sketchy.

• A contributor uploads the video file via custom form that uses Ajax to send the data
• and action in wp-ajax creates a post draft, with form fields added as hidden postmeta
• The video is copied to the media gallery, VideoPress processes it and it is inserted as a shortcode into the post's content
• A moderator edits the draft. There's a metabox that shows all the hidden custom fields in a form.
• Each field as an "accept" button that copies the data to the corresponding metabok (wikes!)
• The moderator picks the thumbnail and publishes the posts.

In the next version, all metadata will be added directly to its corresponding metabox, and the video as a videopress block.

Right now I am cleaning dependencies from the theme (everything is hardcoded) and moving it to a plugin. Once everything is tested it would be much faster to move forward.

Mi priority right now is to patch the video thumbnails selector so I can be working on the new version without that added pressure

[wplmillet]

Hello, just a quick question.
Currently, how does the system choose the thumbnail? Is it the first image? (Unlikely.) Is it the first animation? Or is it random?
I tried placing keyframes at the beginning of the video to see if they’d be detected during analysis, but nothing happened.
However, they are recognized as such locally with:

ffmpeg -skip_frame nokey -i myvideo.mp4 -vsync 0 keyframe-%03d.jpg

I extracted the keyframes, and the first 5 located within the first 6 seconds match the desired thumbnail perfectly.
Hence my question.
While digging around, I see that there are a few possible parameters in the short code.
Maybe it’s possible to force the display of a thumbnail with an image?
If that exists, I haven’t found it.
Thanks