Video Thumbnails makes it easy to automatically display video thumbnails in your template. When you publish a post, this plugin will find the first video embedded and locate the thumbnail for you. Thumbnails can be saved to your media library and set as a featured image automatically. There's even support for custom post types and custom fields!

Video Thumbnails currently supports these video services:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Facebook
• Blip
• Justin.tv
• Dailymotion
• Metacafe
• Funny or Die
• MPORA
• Wistia
• Youku
• CollegeHumor

Video Thumbnails even works with most video embedding plugins, including:

• Automatic Youtube Video Posts Plugin
• Viper's Video Quicktags
• Simple Video Embedder
• Vimeo Shortcode
• WP YouTube Lyte

Some functions are available to advanced users who want to customize their theme:

• <?php video_thumbnail(); ?> will echo a thumbnail URL or the default image located at wp-content/plugins/video-thumbnails/default.jpg if a thumbnail cannot be found. Here is an example: <img src="<?php video_thumbnail(); ?>" width="300" />
• <?php $video_thumbnail = get_video_thumbnail(); ?> will return the thumbnail URL or return NULL if none is found. In this example, a thumbnail is only shown if one is found: <?php if( ( $video_thumbnail = get_video_thumbnail() ) != null ) { echo "<img src='" . $video_thumbnail . "' />"; } ?>

Author	Sutherland Boswell Profile
Contributors	sutherlandboswell
Tags	Blip, dailymotion, featured image, image, justin.tv, metacafe, post thumbnail, thumbnails, video, vimeo, youtube

1. 

   The Video Thumbnail meta box on the Edit Post page

2. 

   Settings page

1. Upload the /video-thumbnails/ directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress

2.0.2

• Added descriptive messages for errors during provider tests
• Fix possible fatal error on activation when VimeoAPIException is already declared
• Fix possible undefined index warnings for provider settings

2.0.1

• Added support for Facebook's iFrame player

2.0

• Completely rewritten for better performance, more organized code, and easier maintenance
• Added support for Funny or Die
• Added support for MPORA
• Added support for Wistia
• Added support for Facebook videos
• Added support for CollegeHumor
• Added support for Youku
• Added support for HD YouTube thumbnails
• Added support for higher resolution Vimeo thumbnails
• Added support for private Vimeo videos (API credentials required)
• Added support for Vimeo channel URLs
• Added support for Automatic Youtube Video Posts Plugin
• Added filters to make plugin extensible
• Removed cURL requirement (still requires ability to make external requests)
• Better checks for blank thumbnails before added to media library
• Adds 'video_thumbnail' field to video thumbnails saved in the media library
• Option to clear all video thumbnails (clears custom field from posts and deletes video thumbnails added after 2.0 from library)
• Better file names
• Added provider tests on debugging page to help troubleshoot
• Added a markup detection on debugging page
• Added "Installation Information" section to debugging page with helpful troubleshooting info
• Settings improvements
• Bug fixes

1.8.2

• Fixes issue where some servers were unable to download thumbnails from YouTube
• Fixes possible issue setting new thumbnail as featured image

1.8.1

• Plugin now scans posts added using XML-RPC which makes posting videos from iOS or other apps work smoothly

1.8

• Added support for custom fields via a new setting
• Added support for YouTube's privacy-enhanced domain (youtube-nocookie.com)
• Fixed image duplication bug
• Now more consistent with WordPress Coding Standards (thanks Daedalon)

1.7.7

• Better cURL error handling
• Better regex matching
• Bug fixes
• Thanks to Daedalon for many of these changes

1.7.6

• Fixed plugin link
• Added donate button

1.7.5

• Bugfix for array error on line 408

1.7.4

• Fixed Dailymotion bug (thanks Gee)
• Added detection for Dailymotion URLs (thanks Gee)
• Added support for WP YouTube Lyte

1.7.3

• More comprehensive search for embedded YouTube videos

1.7.2

• Added support for Dailymotion and Metacafe

1.7

• Added new option to scan past posts for video thumbnails

1.6

• Added support for custom post types

1.5

• Video thumbnails are now only saved when a post's status changes to published.
• Removed URL field from the Video Thumbnail meta box on the Edit Post Page
• Added a "Reset Video Thumbnail" button to the meta box
• Accidental duplicate images should no longer be problem

1.1.1

• Fixed a bug related to scheduled posts sometimes not saving thumbnail URL to the meta field

1.1

• Fixed bug created by a change in YouTube's embed codes

1.0.9

• More work on fixing the duplicate image bug

1.0.8

• (Attempted to) fix another bug that could create duplicate images when updating a post

1.0.7

• Fixed a bug that could create duplicate images on auto-save

1.0.6

• Improved Blip.tv support

1.0.5

• Now using cURL to help save thumbnails locally instead of file_get_contents()

1.0.4

• Added compatibility with YouTube's new iframe embedding
• Now supports most embedding plugins

1.0.3

• Fixed an issue where existing thumbnails (such as ones manually set by the user) would be replaced by Video Thumbnails
• Added a checks to see if cURL is running

1.0.1

• Removed "Scan for Video Thumbnails" button from settings page until improvements can be made

1.0

• Video Thumbnails can now be stored in the local WordPress media library
• Video Thumbnails stored locally can automatically be set as the featured image, making it support many themes automatically
• Added an options page to enable/disable local storage and enable/disable automatically setting that thumbnail as the featured image
• Settings page also includes a button to scan all posts for video thumbnails

0.6

• Added support for Justin.tv
• Fixed bug that could cause a conflict with other plugins

0.5.5

• Video thumbnails are now found at the time the post is saved

0.5.4

• Video thumbnails can be retrieved for a specific post ID by passing a parameter to the video_thumbnail() or get_video_thumbnail() function. For example: <?php $id = 25; $thumbnail = get_video_thumbnail($id); if($thumbnail!=null) echo $thumbnail; ?>

0.5.3

• Better support for Vimeo Shortcode (thanks to Darren for the tip)

0.5.2

• Added support for Simple Video Embedder

0.5.1

• Added a test to make sure the YouTube thumbnail actually exists. This prevents you from getting that ugly default thumbnail from YouTube.

0.5

• Thumbnail URLs are now stored in a custom field with each post, meaning the plugin only has to interact with outside APIs once per post.
• Added a "Video Thumbnail" meta box to the edit screen for each post, which can be manually set or will be set automatically once video_thumbnail() or get_video_thumbnail() is called in a loop for that post.

0.3

• Added basic support for Blip.tv auto embedded using URLs in this format: http://blip.tv/file/12345

0.2.3

• Added support for any Vimeo URL

0.2.2

• Added support for Vimeo Shortcode

0.2.1

• Added support for Vimeo players embedded using an iframe

0.2

• Added get_video_thumbnail() to return the URL without echoing or return null if no thumbnail is found, making it possible to only display a thumbnail if one is found.

0.1.3

• Fixed an issue where no URL was returned when Vimeo's rate limit had been exceeded. The default image URL is now returned, but a future version of the plugin will store thumbnails locally for a better fix.

0.1.2

• Fixed a possible issue with how the default image URL is created

0.1.1

• Fixed an issue with the plugin directory's name that caused the default URL to be broken
• Added support for YouTube URLs

0.1

• Initial release

My theme isn't showing thumbnails, what's wrong?

The most likely problem is that your theme doesn't support post thumbnails. If thumbnails are supported, you should see a box titled "Featured Image" on the edit post page. If thumbnails aren't supported, your theme will have to be modified to support Featured Images or to support one of our custom functions.

How can I use Video Thumbnails if I use a custom field to store the video?

On the Video Thumbnails settings page just enter the name of the custom field and the plugin will scan it.

Can I use the functions outside of a loop?

Yes, but be sure to include the post ID as a parameter. For example: <?php $thumbnail = get_video_thumbnail(25); ?>

My video service/embedding plugin isn't included, can you add it?

If the service allows a way to retrieve thumbnails, I'll do my best to add it.

How do I use this plugin with custom post types?

The settings page includes a checklist of all your post types so you can pick and choose.

I am editing my theme and only want to display a thumbnail if one is found. How do I do this?

<?php if( ( $video_thumbnail = get_video_thumbnail() ) != null ) { echo "<img src='" . $video_thumbnail . "' />"; } ?>

will only display a thumbnail when one exists, but I recommend using the Featured Image setting and the_post_thumbnail template tag.

I edited my theme and now I'm getting huge thumbnails, how can I resize them?

The best solution is to use the Featured Image setting and the_post_thumbnail template tag.

As an alternative you could assign a class to the element and style it with CSS.

I edited my theme and now I'm seeing the thumbnail and the video, how do I only display the thumbnail?

Every theme is different, so this can be tricky if you aren't familiar with WordPress theme development. You need to edit your template in the appropriate place, replacing <?php the_content(); > with <?php the_excerpt(); > so that only an excerpt of the post is shown on the home page or wherever you would like to display the video thumbnail.

Why are there black bars on some YouTube thumbnails?

This is an unfortunate side effect of some old YouTube videos not having widescreen thumbnails. As of version 2.0, the plugin checks for HD thumbnails so this issue should be less common.

Why did it stop finding thumbnails for Vimeo?

The Vimeo API has a rate limit, so in rare cases you may exceed this limit. Try again after a few hours.

Known Issues

• In some cases you may have to manually search for thumbnails on the post editor

Roadmap

With the release of 2.0, focus will be put on ensuring more widespread support and providing tools for other developers.