SUU Design’s Video Thumbnails Maker 9.0 has shipped with new support for creating animated video thumbnail sheets.

You’re able to choose which thumbnail is animated, and the duration of the animation (2-10 seconds).

The finished results may be saved as WebM or APNG, and a scaled-down version should be embedded here.

Use the embedded video controls to view the example image full-size, and if you don’t see it at all, try again with a browser that isn’t IE.

Elsewhere, “Incremental filenames” and “Save each job into its own folder” settings give you new ways to organise your thumbnail output.

There are also the usual scattering of minor cosmetic changes and bug fixes.

This release is all about the animation, then, and in our first look it worked well and looked great.

If there’s an issue, it’s that there’s no preview, no way to see how your animation is going to look. You have to create it, view the results, and if you’re not happy, tweak your settings and try again.

Despite that, it’s a good program, with minimal limitations on the free version (one thumbnail shows a splash screen). Take a look.

Video Thumbnails Maker 9.0 is a shareware application for Windows XP and later.