Looking for a simple way to pull down a YouTube thumbnail image of a video online? I thought this information would be helpful to some of you. I ran across where I wanted to use a thumbnail image to promote a YouTube video and I found myself curious on how to accomplish this. It really is pretty simple so let's dive in here.

The Basic URL to Pull YouTube Thumbnail Image

http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/#.jpg

Where you see “VIDEO_ID” is where you'd put the unique block of characters that identifies that video. So if the link is http://youtu.be/6Gv9knBA4aA to your video then simply use 6Gv9knBA4aA for the “VIDEO_ID” part of the above URL. [Read more…]