How can I get video thumbnail of youtube and vimeo embed code using php?

Question

I have a WordPress site in which I am inserting video embed code in the post editor. In the front end I need to show the video Thumbnail on click on them it will show the video in lightbox.

The requirement is that, I need to show the video thumbnail of the videos I have given in the editor.

I will use YouTube and vimeo embed code and if it is other video then I will show post thumbnail, or a default image.

I will use one video embed code per posts.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Using Youtube API

http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/#.jpg
where,
VIDEO_ID = bQVoAWSP7k4
# = 1,2, or 3

Using Vimeo API

Making Video Request

http://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/video_id.output

where, 
video_id :  The ID of the video you want information for.
output  :  Specify the output type. It currently offer JSON, PHP, and XML formats.

php code for vimeo:

$imgid = 6825415;
$image = unserialize(file_get_contents("http://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/$imgid.php"));
echo $image[0]['thumbnail_medium'];

Answer 2

Thumbnails you can load from video url.

VIDEO URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzf0rvQa4Mc

THUMBNAIL URL

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/Xzf0rvQa4Mc/default.jpg

http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/Xzf0rvQa4Mc/default.jpg

http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/Xzf0rvQa4Mc/default.jpg

http://i4.ytimg.com/vi/Xzf0rvQa4Mc/default.jpg

It takes some time to replicate images to all thumbnails urls (maybe servers) for new videos.

If there is no thumbnail, it returns image with camera (exactly 893 bytes length).

EXAMPLE

    http://i4.ytimg.com/vi/Xzf0rvQa4Md/default.jpg

if you want to get yout tube video id like this

better with this

regexp (youtube\.com\/(watch\?v=)?(v\/)?([\w\-]+)) 

it can handle both urls (with /v/ and with watch?v=)

preg_match('/youtube\.com\/v\/([\w\-]+)/', $code, $match);

echo $match[3];