YouTube maxresdefault thumbnails

Question

I need to use the maxresdefault version of my YouTube video thumbnails for a website, however upon developing the code to achieve this I have found that not all of my videos have these thumbnails available, despite the videos all being 1080p.

Is there a way to automatically generate new high-res thumbnails for all of my videos?

Solution 1

You can use YouTube Data API to retrieve video thumbnails, caption, description, rating, statistics and more. With the YouTube Data API, you can add a variety of YouTube features to your application.

For the high quality version of the thumbnail use a url similar to this:

 http://img.youtube.com/vi/<insert-youtube-video-id-here>/hqdefault.jpg

There is also a medium quality version of the thumbnail, using a url similar to the HQ:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/<insert-youtube-video-id-here>/mqdefault.jpg

For the standard definition version of the thumbnail, use a url similar to this:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/<insert-youtube-video-id-here>/sddefault.jpg

For the maximum resolution version of the thumbnail use a url similar to this:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/<insert-youtube-video-id-here>/maxresdefault.jpg

Here's the Official Google Documentation for Youtube API https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/thumbnails

Here's where I get my answer: How do I get a YouTube video thumbnail from the YouTube API?

Solution 2

I just ran into the same issue while working on a new website project using videojs-youtube. Some of my videos simply didn't have a maxresdefault.jpg and were thus throwing an error. A thread on the YouTube Help Forums resolved it.

Simply go into the Video Manager (found under Creator Studio), change the thumbnail to one of the original 3 defaults generated by YouTube, save it, leave the page, and then change back to the original thumbnail. Somehow, this generated the maxresdefault.jpg for me and fixed it. I'm going to assume this is a bug on YouTube's end where it just doesn't generate the image.

Solution 3

Updated as on December 2019.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi_webp/<VIDEO_ID>/maxresdefault.webp
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/<VIDEO_ID>/maxresdefault.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/<VIDEO_ID>/hqdefault.jpg

You can add a bookmarklet to your browser:

javascript:window.open('https://i.ytimg.com/vi/' + /^.*(youtu.be\/|v\/|embed\/|watch\?|youtube.com\/user\/[^#]*#([^\/]*?\/)*)\??v?=?([^#\&\?]*).*/.exec(window.location)[3] + '/maxresdefault.jpg', target = "_blank")

If you click on it, while viewing a YouTube video, it will open the thumbnail image for the video in a new tab.