so you have this setting activated where the project thumbnail video only plays on mouseover right?
in customize → project thumbnails → project thumbnail mouseover: Screenshot 2024-09-20 at 14.47.49.png
you'd need to also activate:
lay options → "Activate Mouseover Image for Thumbnails"
and then set an image here that is the one you want to use
then we would need to use custom css to first show the mouseover image, and on hover, show the video that is playing:
you can find code about it here:
http://laythemeforum.com:4567/topic/9038/start-gif-video-mouse-hover-in-project-thumbnail/5