I’ve been working on a video contest project in PHP and it involves user’s submitting their videos from a YouTube link. I needed to show just thumbnails of the videos without having to use a full YouTube embed code. I really didn’t want to get my hands dirty with any kind of YouTube API though. So with a little bit of searching I found that YouTube creates multiple dynamic thumbnails for all of their videos when they’re uploaded.
For example purposes, I will use the incredible, mind-blowing, face-melter music video by DragonForce “Through the Fire and Flames”.
The URLs
In order to properly form a URL for the image, first you’ll need to grab the video’s ID. You get this from the YouTube video’s URL.
This DragonForce’s URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jgrCKhxE1s, so it’s YouTube ID is 0jgrCKhxE1s.
Now here are the URLs you have available …
120×90 image – Choice 1
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/1.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/1.jpg
120×90 image – Choice 2
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/2.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/2.jpg
120×90 image – Choice 3
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/3.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1sg/3.jpg
120×90 image – Default Choice
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/default.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/default.jpg
480×360 image – High Quality (HQ) Choice
(does not need to be an HQ video to have an HQ image)
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hqdefault.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hqdefault.jpg
480×360 image – HQ Choice 1
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hq1.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hq1.jpg
480×360 image – HQ Choice 2
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hq2.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hq2.jpg
480×360 image – HQ Choice 3
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hq3.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hq3.jpg
If anyone knows any other tricks, please share! :)