Methods and systems are described for displaying a thumbnail preview of video content. In an aspect, one or more mosaic images made up of thumbnails corresponding to frames of the video content at multiple time points can be loaded into the system or created by the methods described. In an aspect, the selected thumbnail, as well as any other thumbnails, can be selected in response to receiving a command (e.g., trick play request) from the viewer. The command can dictate the direction from the selected thumbnail that the next thumbnails will be selected. The command can also dictate the frequency with which thumbnails will be selected from the mosaic image. In an aspect, frames comprised of thumbnails can be encoded to create the video content.