Compressor - Poster Frames

Welcome and thank you for reaching out. 🤗

According to Apple:

1. In Compressor, select the job that contains the source file that you want to set a poster frame for.
2. In the preview area, position the timeline playhead at the frame you want to be the poster frame.
3. Click the arrow next to the Marker button, then choose Set Poster Frame.

A poster frame marker appears in the timeline.

After you set a poster frame, you can jump to that frame at any time by clicking the arrow next to the Marker button, then choosing Go to Poster Frame.

Please report back with any additional information or questions.

Good Luck! 👋🏼😉

Smiliñ 😎 Brian | Community Volunteer

Poster Frames are poorly supported.

As a test I made a poster frame in Compressor.app 5.3 and exported as .m4v. It is stored in ItemList:CoverArt:

exiftool -a -G1 -s -n -api QuickTimeUTC=1 compressor.m4v
[ItemList]      CoverArt                        : (Binary data 184009 bytes, use -b option to extract)

It can be extracted with:

exiftool -b -CoverArt compressor.m4v > PosterFrame.jpg

macOS 26.6.2 Tahoe Finder Icon view and Photos.app import dialog display it but when imported to macOS Photos library it is ignored.

BTW a similar effect can be done in QuickTime Player: copy a frame from the movie and then paste it to Finder > Get Info (top left icon) so it is added to the legacy Resource Fork, and displayed in Finder Icon view.

So far, no luck.

Try setting the poster frame after adding the preset.

Smiliñ 😎 Brian | Community Volunteer

It may help us help you if you give some details of what exactly you have tried and also what export settings you are using. I am away from my mac for a few days (traveling), so I can’t check but as I remember it it was pretty straightforward. I hope others can chime in.

That "Set Poster Frame" function in Compressor has always been flakey for me.