Is there a plugin or an easy way to create a thumbnail for a video, instead of the default image.

No, it is not possible, you actually should know that as a long time user ;-): http://www.zenphoto.org/news/problems-with-albums-and-images#thumbnails-for-videos-are-not-created

Thanks. Thought there might be something new. Saw it being done in a wordpress plugin and hoped you had implemented it by now.

As said you need a native libary - not just a plugin - on the server to extract a frame from a video. And of course the server power and memory to do that.

Don't confuse this wiht images from videos from Youtube etc. That is something really different and ZP does not directly support those either.

I understand.

I do have a native directory and my own server and I do not use Youtube - otherwise I wouldn't need the video thumbnail. However I can see that a lot of people don't have that power.

The WP plugin is called Video Embed and Thumbnail Generator.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/

I'll keep hoping. Thanks

Yes, and the documentation of that plugin exactly tells the requirements of above:

If your video can be played natively in your browser, or if you have FFMPEG or LIBAV installed on your server, you can generate thumbnails from your video.

No shared host - our target base - I know including mine has any of these pre installed nor would it allow you to do so. Not even our zenphoto.org server does have these.

If your video can be played natively in your browser

They tell this but I know of no way to extract an actual frame without the above libs. Following the html5 video spec the first frame will be used if no poster image is defined. MAybe there is a way doing this using canvas but that will only work in a few browsers and to my knowledge none of our players has support for it.

Thank you for looking into it.

As an aside, being a wp app, and wp being used by perhaps hundreds of thousands, I would expect that more than 75% of wp users would be on shared hosts. I cannot understand a programmer writing an app for so small a base.

You're the programmer, not me. I believe what you say.

I have a freelance programmer now, writing an app for me. That's how little I know.

WP is flexible as ZP is to cover any no matter how special need (Btw, WP is used by millions actually :-)). I did not mean it is not possible. Of course a plugin to add this could be written. Just as this WP plugin is a 3rd party solution. We certainly welcome anything. It's just that it is not really any of our priorities just lacking resources to even do all we would like to ;-)

I had a vast memory of a tutorial how to add this to ZP from years ago I couldn't find at first (The ticket itself apparently was forgotten to be moved to the user guide so is sadly lost): http://www.zenphoto.org/support/topic.php?id=3224

There seems apparently indeed a way to indeed use canvas and javascript to show a specific frame but that is currently quite browser dependent because of canvas.

I'll live in hope. You have the best image cataloger + going. It's quite robust.
I've never understood why it's free, but that's my gain.
Thanks.

Thanks :-) Zenphoto is open source and as of the licence that will and actually can never change.