A Tic Toc video cover art is a picture or a few frames from an uploaded video. Cover art can prompt viewers to open the video when viewing your profile or searching for clips, so don’t ignore this part of your profile design.
This article will tell you how to make a video cover, its technical parameters, as well as give you design tips.
Cover size, format and positioning
Technical parameters:
The base for the cover is the same size as the video – 1080 x 1920 px;
scale – 9:16
format – jpg, png;
file weight – up to 30 MB.
Important: when displaying the cover in profile and during search some part of the image is cropped. I can’t say exactly how much it is cut off, but it’s about 250px from the top and bottom. It’s better to place important elements, for example, text as close to the center as possible to get it in the visible part of the cover.
Where is the cover and why is it so important?
- On the profile.
- On the main search page.
- The hashtags page.
- On the music videos page.
- On the music track page.
The cover art should make viewers want to open the video. It’s the element that can make your video stand out among millions of others. Even if you’re in the top spot, for example by hashtags, it’s not certain that your video will open – it might open a video below yours but with a more attractive cover.
Viewers tend to ignore blurry covers or ones that make it unclear what the video is about.
How to make a cover for a video in Tick-Tock
In the standard editor.
When you publish a video to Tic Toc, you can choose a cover artwork in the built-in editor. You’ve uploaded the video, added effects, applied music, and moved on to the part where you need to compose a description, add hashtags, and tag your friends. This is where the cover editor is – click on it.
In the ribbon, choose the piece that will become the cover. The picture is highlighted by a red rectangle. Click Save.
You can also add text over the cover – there is a choice of standard text or with a carpet pad in different styles – Vector, Glitch, Tint, Emblem, News, Retro, Skew, Pill, Pop, Bubble. The text tool is located below selecting a picture for the cover.
Of course, you can add text to the clip at the stage of adding effects, or even edit it in some editor, and then choose this fragment for the cover. But the function with the separate text is better, because it will be added only to the cover, and it won’t be in the video itself.
Through an app
You can first make a nice picture, paste it into the video and use it as a cover. Go to Canva editor and activate 30 day free period (later you can cancel it and use the service for free!). Next, choose a size of 1080 x 1920 px.
Find a nice picture for the background (or upload your own photo), apply text. Or choose a ready template from the Canva library and simply edit it. Save the picture in jpg or png format.
Now we need any linear video editor to merge the picture and clip. The InShot application or the Movavi program will do. Put the picture before the video or at the end after the video and save it as a general clip. Then in the cover editor, find the picture and put it on the cover.
Important note – the Title Editor selects fragments in chaotic order and some fragment with a picture may be missing in the list.
Can I change the cover?
It is impossible to change the cover once the clip is already published. The same as with other manipulations with video – change the effect, crop footage, overlay other music. Therefore, try to do everything right at once.
Article on how to promote your TikTok account from scratch
Examples of covers
What can be placed on the cover of the video in Tik-Tok for viewers to want to watch the clip?
The title of the video’s topic. For example, “I will tell about the life and culture of an ordinary Balinese family”, “Step by step instructions for students how to move to Bali”, “How the Russians are treated in Bali”.
Continuation of the series of videos. This technique will work for subscribers who follow your content – take a topic with a lot of views, shoot a sequel, and put a cover with the text that it’s a sequel. For example, Jana’s tiktoker has a cover that says “A sequel about the cheapest country I’ve been to.
Part 2,3,4. The example has 2 identical covers with the same text, “Where to fly without a visa?” but one of them has “Part 2” highlighted in red. This method is also more oriented towards subscribers.
Question. An example is “How much does a vacation in Bangkok cost?” Obviously, the video has the answer to this question, you want to open and find out.
Question-intrigue. Here you open the clip not to hear the useful information, but to see the denouement of the clip. For example, “Do you think it will fall?
Text-intrigue. Similar to the previous point, but here we are not asking, but affirming – fit part of the plot of the video, for example, “I write a girl a text, not waiting for her answer. I want to open it and see what happened next.
Clickbait. Examples – “These pictures will surprise you”, “You did NOT want to think about THIS”, “we all live in SIMULATION”.
Original shot. Choose the most unusual shot from the video (if there are any) – where you’re in flight, in an unusual pose, an interesting shooting angle so the viewer thinks, “What is this? I’ve got to see it!” and click on the video.
Emotion. You can guess from the facial expression what kind of atmosphere is in the video. For example, in this shot (see the screenshot), you can see that the guy is obviously angry. You want to know what made him so angry. Let’s click on the cover.
The promise of results. For example: “Your legs will be slim and trim,” “This mask will make your skin perfect,” “This exercise will shrink your belly.”
The cover is like something out of a movie. This is a way for those who know how to shoot video or take studio-quality photos. The cover looks like a frame from a movie or music video, and all videos are supposed to be of that quality – you want to see and appreciate it.
Funny shot. There’s not much to comment on – just watch the video.
A one- or two-word headline. It seems to be approximately clear what the video will be about and, at the same time, there is an understatement. Examples – “In vain”, “My paradise”, “No words”, “Best neighbors”, “Night flying”.
*Idea for photographers – photo after processing. Suitable for videos where you share shooting ideas. When you look at the result on the cover, you want to open the video and see how to make such photos.
Expectation vs. reality. In the example below, we see the word “Expectation. If you want to see what happens in reality, open the video.
Conclusion
Try not to ignore the covers in Tick-Tock – they are just as important as the content of your videos. After all, when your profile is being searched and examined, it’s the cover art that will be the deciding factor – will your video get opened or skipped?
What’s important to remember:
– The basis of the cover coincides with the size of your video: 1080 x 1920px, but you need to indent about 250px at the top and bottom, placing text and important elements;
– the cover can be made in the standard editor from a part of the video, or you can create a picture in a third-party application in advance and then glue it to the video;
– in the editor there is an opportunity to overlay text over the cover, in this case it will not be shown in the video;
– you can choose from a total of 7 video fragments selected at random;
– when the video is published, it is impossible to change the cover.