Fetch YouTube highest thumbnail resolution

Question

I want to get youtube highest thumbnail "maxresdefault.jpg"

Like this one

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Cj6ho1-G6tw/maxresdefault.jpg

I'm using this simple php code

<?php

$youtub_id = "Cj6ho1-G6tw";
echo "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/".$youtub_id."/maxresdefault.jpg";

?>

The problem with the code above is there is videos like this one http://youtu.be/VGazSZUYyf4 NOT HD

And the result is gray small 404 image of youtube

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VGazSZUYyf4/maxresdefault.jpg

So how to get the highest youtube thumbnail so if "maxresdefault" not available get the next big thumbnail "hqdefault", if not get the next "mqdefault" etc ...

I tried to use gdata youtube but either way the video hd or not "maxresdefault" not showing.

Answer 1

The reason is because the resolution on Making the Most of Maps is not at least 720p.

Looking at the api for this specific video, you can see that there is no maxresdefault.

Only videos that are 720p or higher in resolution have maxresdefault. This is not listed in the API in videos that are higher. So in order to get the highest resolution, you should also check if the maxresdefault works as well.

<media:thumbnail url='http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/VGazSZUYyf4/default.jpg' height='90' width='120' time='00:15:12.500' yt:name='default'/>
<media:thumbnail url='http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/VGazSZUYyf4/mqdefault.jpg' height='180' width='320' yt:name='mqdefault'/>
<media:thumbnail url='http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/VGazSZUYyf4/hqdefault.jpg' height='360' width='480' yt:name='hqdefault'/>
<media:thumbnail url='http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/VGazSZUYyf4/1.jpg' height='90' width='120' time='00:07:36.250' yt:name='start'/>
<media:thumbnail url='http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/VGazSZUYyf4/2.jpg' height='90' width='120' time='00:15:12.500' yt:name='middle'/>
<media:thumbnail url='http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/VGazSZUYyf4/3.jpg' height='90' width='120' time='00:22:48.750' yt:name='end'/>

Your best bet for the highest quality thumbnail is to use the API and get the image with the largest yt:name attribute.

The order is:

default
mqdefault
hqdefault
sddefault

Example code of this in action:

<?php

$youtub_id = "VGazSZUYyf4";

$images = json_decode(file_get_contents("http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/".$youtub_id."?v=2&alt=json"), true);
$images = $images['entry']['media$group']['media$thumbnail'];
$image  = $images[count($images)-4]['url'];

$maxurl = "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/".$youtub_id."/maxresdefault.jpg";
$max    = get_headers($maxurl);

if (substr($max[0], 9, 3) !== '404') {
    $image = $maxurl;   
}

echo '<img src="'.$image.'">';

This works both on $youtub_id = "Cj6ho1-G6tw"; and $youtub_id = "VGazSZUYyf4";.