0:00 MouseClick Tutorials is launching a course on how to make websites in content.[cite: 1] 0:03 This is the base its consistent thumbnails were built on. The original course thumbnails were made with[cite: 1] 0:11 Gemini. MouseClick Tutorials uploaded its logo by clicking the plus and selecting the file.[cite: 1] 0:16 Then entered a prompt. The first prompt and back and forth reiteration ones were written before[cite: 1] 0:21 this tutorial. So think of the one you see here as a simple sample. It's long, but it's just[cite: 1] 0:25 plain language describing what is wanted and Gemini builds it. The easiest way to do this is with[cite: 1] 0:30 speech-to-text. Ramble your prompts into existence by speaking them out loud because you'll[cite: 1] 0:33 get way more accomplished that way since AI is fully capable of parsing out your intent even when[cite: 1] 0:37 it's surrounded by speech-to-text ramblings that include non-precise thoughts and autocorrects.[cite: 1] 0:41 Rambling is lame to find in content as a content consumer. But it's useful for speeding up the process[cite: 1] 0:46 of making content as a content creator. Just be sure to ramble less and less per each subsequent[cite: 1] 0:50 iteration to get the attention-to-detail stuff taken care of. Speech-to-text all the way. Initial prompt[cite: 1] 0:55 giant ramble prompts after more and more concise. Pause. Three. Two. One. Now you can see the rest.[cite: 1] 1:04 Three. Two. One. Very little effort produced draft one. Imagine going back and forth with Gemini[cite: 1] 1:12 20 times, refining what doesn't work, a strong thumbnail comes together quickly. When only prompting[cite: 1] 1:18 is used on a series of thumbnails, the thumbnails will start drifting. A mascot feeding a shark in[cite: 1] 1:23 one thumbnail and doing something else in the next makes sense because the mascot is recognizable[cite: 1] 1:28 but fits each scene. Fonts changing is not fine. A logo that degrades into a photocopy of a[cite: 1] 1:35 photocopy is not fine. DaVinci Resolve can solve this problem. With the thumbnail base image on the[cite: 1] 1:40 timeline in DaVinci, put an adjustment clip above it. Then right-click on the image, go to change[cite: 1] 1:45 clip duration. Choose one second and click change. This makes it really small. You can zoom in if you[cite: 1] 1:51 need to. Later on, this will be copy-pasted a bunch of times, and this will be cut like[cite: 1] 1:55 this. So you'll see that you have one image and then one adjustment clip portion.[cite: 1] 1:59 Let's undo the cut and just click on the adjustment clip. In Fusion, click somewhere so 2:03 that you're not selecting anything. Press Shift and Spacebar at the same time. Then 2:06 you can choose your node. Do a merge node, and this will go down here. But it won't 2:11 add it to the line unless you hold Shift. Once you get the blue and yellow lines, let go. 2:15 And do this again. With this, you can just press Control or Command + C at the same time 2:21 to copy, and then Control or Command + V to paste, and do it three times, but depending on 2:27 what you have for nodes, it has the potential to cause node chaos. But right now, that worked. 2:34 It was an easy way to do it. Text nodes, text+, add it, copy that, and do that three times. Connect the 2:41 text to the merge. Notice the image is not showing up in the timeline. Got to make sure that 2:46 this is in the right spot. Look for the thumbnail, the adjustment clip, and the playhead. 2:53 So now, it will show up. Click the first text node. Type in something. You see it goes to both sides, 3:01 so the text goes to the right, but pushes the earlier text to the left, and it also pushes the 3:05 earlier text up when you go to the next line. Set the vertical anchor to the up position. 3:12 Set the horizontal anchor to the left position. The course thumbnail said straight to the point, 3:18 no rambling, no fluff. The text ran out of room. So let's bring the tracking down. 3:24 Now you can see all of the text. The text is still too tall because the cat's ears are in the way. 3:32 So let's bring the size down. That's actually probably decent. Let's go to Layout. 3:40 The Y, bring it up. And you can change the angle down here under rotation order. 3:47 Might as well delete the third text node and duplicate from the first, 3:54 since they're going to look the same except for holding their own specific words. 4:01 The second one is hiding underneath the first one. Change its Y position and you'll see it. 4:07 Back to the text tab. In the text box, thumbnails rule. The center text node does the thumbnail's title. 4:14 Adjust size, tracking, and line spacing until the title is the way it should be. 4:21 Video editing is absolutely mind-boggling, especially when you're making a video about video editing. 4:28 Got lost recreating this part. Go to shading. You have shading elements you can use with presets. 4:33 One, two, three, and four are already available. If you go to two, enable it. You see it adds a red 4:39 border to the letters. A lot of people may find that tough on their eyes, so don't use that one. 4:44 Black shadow, enable it. Look what happened right where the cat and the hourglass are. The text is 4:48 much easier to see. Blue border: there are useful moments for that, but for this thumbnail it just 4:53 obviously looks horrendous. Untoggle. Now for the gold on the first one, let's go to text. 5:00 Use this eyedropper icon. And then select the cheese from the cheese desk. So if you go 5:05 low on the cheese desk, you get a bunch of different colors in that cheese, because it's not just one 5:09 color. It's a bunch of colors with a lot of pixels, but you find something that looks decent 5:14 and you let go of the eyedropper. So let go of your mouse. Did this before, but if you have two 5:19 text nodes that you need the same except for different wording, whenever you make a ton of changes 5:24 to one and the other is way different, it's easier to delete a node and copy-paste the one that has 5:29 the full set of fine tunings already locked in. Remember to reset the text to what it needs to be. 5:34 On the timeline, copy-paste the thumbnail's base image a bunch of times. 5:39 Line the playhead up with the end of an image. Cut with Command + B on Mac or Control + B on Windows. 5:46 Repeat for every image in the series. The one long adjustment clip becomes a bunch of short ones, 5:50 each sitting right above its image. And then make sure that you click the clip above the image you 5:55 want to edit. So if you edit this one, you can say "test 1, 2, 3". See what happens. So very easy. 6:01 You can export the current frame as a still, which is one way you can export thumbnails. 6:05 Go to File, Export. Export current frame as still. 6:10 If you see keyboard buttons on the right side of that menu item, you can use that keyboard button 6:15 or combo to simplify and export more stills faster. If that hasn't been set up yet, 6:20 you can go to DaVinci Resolve, Keyboard Customization, to set that up. MouseClick Tutorials 6:26 hasn't made a keyboard customization tutorial yet, but there are plenty on YouTube. 6:30 Single exports are great for finishing touches. For a whole batch at once, there's a faster way. 6:37 You can bulk export images the same way you export video. 6:40 Select all the adjustment clips and images that your thumbnail batch consists of. 6:45 Then right-click on one of the images. When the menu pops up, 6:49 click Change Clip Duration. If you have the clip duration set at one second per clip, 6:54 that's great for timeline editing. But each second is 24 frames by default. So on the bulk 7:00 export, you'd get 24 identical thumbnail files, taking up unnecessary space and resulting in 7:05 more sorting for you to do for no reason at all, unless you reduce the duration down to a single frame. 7:11 That looks like this. Gaps between clips are skipped on export; closing them is optional. 7:16 Now the deliver page, click individual clips, one file for every clip, pick JPEG for smaller files, 7:22 or PNG for sharper ones. Choose a folder to catch the files. Add to render queue. 7:28 Render all. Notice the mascot giving a thumbs up at the bottom. That was added on purpose as an eye 7:35 catcher. There are two ways to do it. The wise way: have Gemini make the character on its own. 7:41 Remove the background. Add it to the timeline as an image layer above the thumbnail 7:45 but under the adjustment clip. Nothing else in the thumbnail can drift. The quick way: 7:50 ask Gemini to bake it into the thumbnail directly. Be careful. Drift isn't just text. 7:55 Colors, faces, and small details can shift too. If it drifts, don't keep prompting. 8:00 Start a fresh thread, upload the image again, and retry. 8:15 [Music] 8:31 Like, comment, subscribe.