How do I get a YouTube video thumbnail from the YouTube API?

Question

If I have a YouTube video URL, is there any way to use PHP and cURL to get the associated thumbnail from the YouTube API?

Answer 1

In YouTube API V3 we can also use these URLs for obtaining thumbnails... They are classified based on their quality.

https://i1.ytimg.com/vi//default.jpg -   default
https://i1.ytimg.com/vi//mqdefault.jpg - medium 
https://i1.ytimg.com/vi//hqdefault.jpg - high
https://i1.ytimg.com/vi//sddefault.jpg - standard

And for the maximum resolution..

https://i1.ytimg.com/vi//maxresdefault.jpg

One advantage of these URLs over the URLs in the first answer is that these URLs don't get blocked by firewalls.