Methods and systems may provide for embedding thumbnail information into a video file such as a clip, stream, recording, and so forth. The thumbnail information may include, for example, a representative image of the video content in the file, an index to a key frame in the video content, or any combination thereof. If the thumbnail information includes the representative image, the representative image may be embedded at a predetermined location in the file. If the thumbnail information includes the index to a key frame, the index may be embedded in a header of the file.