Hi, I have embedded a YouTube video but there is a flicker at the start of the video? It appears to be showing the thumbnail image before the video is played? When I play the video directly on YouTube it just plays without showing the thumbnail. Can you tell me how to fix this please as it does not look smooth. I have tried everything but to no avail.
Unfortunately, this is a common behavior with embedded YouTube videos. What you’re seeing is the default thumbnail briefly flashing before playback begins, and this is something that’s handled on YouTube’s end and cannot be fully controlled when embedding.
If you’d like a smoother experience, we recommend using a self-hosted HTML5 video instead. This way, you can fully control the playback behavior and avoid issues like flickering. You can even download the video from YouTube (just make sure you have the rights or permission to do so) and upload it to your own server.
Ah ok, no worries. I will look at hosting it on Vimeo or trying to remove the thumbnail that YouTube generated. The other thing I can thinking about it (and for anyone else reading this comment it may help) is to change the generated YouTube thumbnail to the first frame of the video so that nothing changes at the start, worth a try and hopefully may fix the problem. Thank you for your reply / help : )
You can set a custom poster/thumbnail image (as shown in the attached screenshot), but unfortunately, even with YouTube videos, the default YouTube thumbnail will still briefly appear at the very beginning. So while this can help, it’s not a perfect solution either.
I did what you said and just ditched YouTube. I shrunk the video down to 11mb and just uploaded via my server. It should be fine as the flicker was not an option. It's still embedded in Layerslider and looking good. Thank you for your help.
Hi, I have embedded a YouTube video but there is a flicker at the start of the video? It appears to be showing the thumbnail image before the video is played? When I play the video directly on YouTube it just plays without showing the thumbnail. Can you tell me how to fix this please as it does not look smooth. I have tried everything but to no avail.
Kind Regards,
Darren
Hi Darren,
Unfortunately, this is a common behavior with embedded YouTube videos. What you’re seeing is the default thumbnail briefly flashing before playback begins, and this is something that’s handled on YouTube’s end and cannot be fully controlled when embedding.
If you’d like a smoother experience, we recommend using a self-hosted HTML5 video instead. This way, you can fully control the playback behavior and avoid issues like flickering. You can even download the video from YouTube (just make sure you have the rights or permission to do so) and upload it to your own server.
Best Regards,
George | Kreatura Dev Team
Ah ok, no worries. I will look at hosting it on Vimeo or trying to remove the thumbnail that YouTube generated. The other thing I can thinking about it (and for anyone else reading this comment it may help) is to change the generated YouTube thumbnail to the first frame of the video so that nothing changes at the start, worth a try and hopefully may fix the problem. Thank you for your reply / help : )
You can set a custom poster/thumbnail image (as shown in the attached screenshot), but unfortunately, even with YouTube videos, the default YouTube thumbnail will still briefly appear at the very beginning. So while this can help, it’s not a perfect solution either.
Attached files: Screenshot 2025-10-21 at 12.12.27.png
Best Regards,
George | Kreatura Dev Team
I did what you said and just ditched YouTube. I shrunk the video down to 11mb and just uploaded via my server. It should be fine as the flicker was not an option. It's still embedded in Layerslider and looking good. Thank you for your help.
Thank you for your feedback, have a nice day!
Best Regards,
George | Kreatura Dev Team