Tonight I stumbled on a way to remove them - but have only tested on my 1920x1080's
Download the free "Template Injection" module from the marketplace then add this to the "Template Injection" text box and save
hqdefault.jpg|mqdefault.jpg
Really all this seems to be doing is changing the "h" in hqdefault.jpg to an "m" in mqdefault.jpg
If you look at a YT video in the datastore if its like mine you will see:
youtube_aretwork_url: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AdttvLChEkw/hqdefault.jpg
but what you WANT it to say is
youtube_aretwork_url: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AdttvLChEkw/mqdefault.jpg
If you click either of those image links you should see the difference
Anyways- if you have the black bars in thumbnails and its REALLY messing up your combined video templates like it was mine-just download the template Injection module and add the
hqdefault.jpg|mqdefault.jpg
Hope this helps someone_ Thanks Michael for helping me with this!
updated by @derrickhand300: 03/12/16 04:30:31AM