User blog:Mfaizsyahmi/How to get the thumbnail of a YouTube video

For the purpose of adding a primary image to a parody articles, it is recommended that the parody's thumbnails are used. The best way to get this is by the author uploading it himself, but more than likely he should not be bothered to. There's also the possibility of downloading the video, find approximately the exact frame where the thumbnail comes from, and exporting the image but this would mean downloading MBs of data (fine if you'd like to watch them offline and stash it in your drives though ;) ). Screencapping from the YouTube watch page is highly discouraged.

Thus, the best way to retrieve the screenshot of the video where the thumbnail is derived, in its fullest resolution, is to do a little URL trick; The code's thus:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi//maxresdefault.jpg

This should work on any video on YouTube.