Get YouTube video thumbnail and use it with PHP

php api youtube youtube-api video-thumbnails
user5063431 picture user5063431 · Sep 2, 2015 · Viewed 33.2k times · Source

How can I access thumbnail collection of a YouTube video using the link of the video from the YouTube API. I want thumbnails to be displayed on website using PHP using the video id stored in a variable for example $link

Answer

Ron picture Ron · Sep 2, 2015

YouTube stores many different types of thumbnails on its server for different devices. You can access it by using the video id which every YouTube video has. You can display the images on your website using a variable $link which holds the id of the video and substituting it in the place for video_ID in the link.

Low quality thumbnail:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/<YouTube_Video_ID_HERE>/sddefault.jpg

Medium quality thumbnail:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/<YouTube_Video_ID_HERE>/mqdefault.jpg

High quality thumbnail:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/<YouTube_Video_ID_HERE>/hqdefault.jpg

Maximum quality thumbnail:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/<YouTube_Video_ID_HERE>/maxresdefault.jpg

Example:

If you want to access the thumbnail of the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-GYwhqDo6o

Video ID : Q-GYwhqDo6o

So, this is how video thumbnail link looks like:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/Q-GYwhqDo6o/mqdefault.jpg

Hope it helps. Enjoy coding.

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