An algorithm identifies a salient video frame from a video sequence for use as a video thumbnail. The identification of a video thumbnail is based on a frame goodness measure. The algorithm calculates a color histogram of a frame, and then calculates the entropy and standard deviation of the color histogram. The frame goodness measure is a weighted combination of the entropy and the standard deviation. A video frame having the highest value of frame goodness measure for a video sequence is determined as the video thumbnail for a video sequence.