How to change thumbnail/poster image via URL parameter with YouTube?

Question

I have googled this. All I get from that Google search are ways to view/download the three images (0-2) that YouTube creates for a user when they upload a video. Example around that here: http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-thumbnail-image/

I was wondering if anyone knows a way to select which one of the three images to use as a poster image when embedding a video. Example: http://www.youtube.com/embed/_z-hEyVQDRA?rel=0&showinfo=0&thumbnailVersion=2

Solution

I don't know of a way to do this (I have looked before), so my solution was essentially to display the thumbnail in a container, and adding/displaying the embed when the thumb/container is clicked. Something like

http://jsfiddle.net/brysmi/RnN7R/

I would mess around with just making the thumbnail into the player div background or something like that. Also, if you wanted bigger player/thumbs, you would have to look at the things you found already to figure out the urls for hq sized version of http://img.youtube.com/vi/sftuxbvGwiU/2.jpg ...

After that, good luck.

See also How do I get a YouTube video thumbnail from the YouTube API?, Youtube JSAPI, examples not working, YouTube iframe API: how do I control a iframe player that's already in the HTML?

And so on. Cheers.