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

YouTube is owned by Google and Google likes to have a reasonable number of images for different screen sizes, hence its images are stored in different sizes. Here is an example of how your thumbnail will be like:

Low quality thumbnail:

http://img.youtube.com/vi//sddefault.jpg

Medium quality thumbnail:

http://img.youtube.com/vi//mqdefault.jpg

High quality thumbnail:

http://img.youtube.com/vi//hqdefault.jpg

Maximum quality thumbnail:

http://img.youtube.com/vi//maxresdefault.jpg