How to grab and download the you tube video thumbnail
You tube generates a thumbnail of the video uploaded and is shown as default before it starts playing. In case you want to grab that thumbnail and want to use it somewhere here is small trick.
Get the You tube video id
You tube video id can be found either in the direct url they give e.g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qt-7zEJwKM ( Tha string after “v=” ) or in the embed code where it says <embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/5qt-7zEJwKM .
Get the thumbnail image of the you tube video
You tube sores all these images under their sub domain IMG. Copy this url http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/default.jpg where Video ID is the one you just grabbed using above step. paste it in your browser and hit enter.
e.g You can see this link http://img.youtube.com/vi/5qt-7zEJwKM/default.jpg directly.

Finding You tube video ID and grabbing the thumbnail of the video
This trick was explained by Scott Klarr. he also explains how to get the Google Video thumbnail which is little more complex. I would suggest you to read his post on How to grab thumbnails for youtube and google video
Related : 10 must have Youtube utilities
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Posted on 8th October 2008 by Ashish Mohta , A Professional Tech blogger, Editor and Writer who talks about solving day to day problems of people who use computer. He also writes on How to use the applications like Office, PC tips, Online tools,Browsers and more. All posts by Ashish Mohta | Connect with me @ Twitter | Linkedin | Facebook | Stumble










Thanks a lot! You’ve saved me from my ugly boss “I want youtube preview image embedded on my site!!!”
Thanks for this useful code. Now I can put thumbnails instead of putting the whole flash code for the movie. It will make pages load faster.
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