php - Removing black borders 4:3 on youtube thumbnails

Question

E.g. I have a link

http://img.youtube.com/vi/aOPGepdbfpo/0.jpg

for a youtube video thumbnail:

And I would like to remove the black top and bottom border so I get a picture like this:

Could it be done using PHP function javascript/jQuery or maybe youtube api itself?

Answer 1

YouTube offers images that don't have the 4:3 ratio black strips. To get a 16:9 video thumbnail with no black strips, try one of these:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/<insert-youtube-video-id-here>/mqdefault.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/<insert-youtube-video-id-here>/maxresdefault.jpg

The first one mqdefault comes as a 320x180 pixel image.

The second one maxresdefault comes as a 1500x900 pixel image, so it would need resizing to use as a thumbnail. This is a nice image but it isn't always available. If the video is of a low quality (less than 720p I'd imagine, not exactly sure) then this 'maxresdefault' becomes unavailable. So never rely on it.