Generating YouTube Video Thumbnails without the API

Question

I wanted to know if it's ok to use the returned thumbnails image URL and use it as a template to retrieve YouTube video thumbnail images by the unique ID, or I must use the YouTube API to get the URL String. I've already signed for the API, tested it and know how the URL structure looks like, so I can actually used it without retrieving the result first. Is it OK in terms of the YouTube API terms of service or whether I must get the result first by making an API Call. I am using YouTube API Ver 3.0 Thanks.

Answer 1

The YouTube terms of service are here:

https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms

"Your API Client may employ session-based caching solely of YouTube API results, but You must use commercially reasonable efforts to cause Your API Client to update cached results upon any changes in video metadata. For example, if a video is removed from the YouTube service or made "private" by the video uploader, cached results shall be removed from Your cache."

I understand that this language can be dense, and unfortunately, I cannot interpret it for you past a certain degree because I am not a lawyer. However: it sounds to me like your usage is okay, given that you make every effort not to serve stale API results.

The longer term solution is to figure out why this isn't part of the API, and to make a business justification so it IS included in the API. Can you post a short code snippet?

Answer 2

There is a post about how to generate these thumbnails in the faq:

How do I get a YouTube video thumbnail from the YouTube API?

It doesn't look like the terms of service restricts you from embedding these directly, so you should be fine using the predictable format.