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How to get thumbnails of YouTube Videos!

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 ...

120x90 image - Choice 1
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/1.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/1.jpg

120x90 image - Choice 2
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/2.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/2.jpg

120x90 image - Choice 3

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/3.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1sg/3.jpg

120x90 image - Default Choice

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/default.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/default.jpg

480x360 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

480x360 image - HQ Choice 1

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hq1.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hq1.jpg

480x360 image - HQ Choice 2

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hq2.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hq2.jpg

480x360 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! :)