How to get YouTube moving thumbnail

[shaziaijaz]

How to get YouTube moving thumbnail
https://i.ytimg.com/an_webp/wTzTyVpgytk/mqdefault_6s.webp?du=3000&sqp=CNjqooEG&rs=AOn4CLAx64ao7CbvmV6IzxKOK4pjNnyeVA

[johtso]

The animated thumbnails are only added to the DOM when the mouse is hovered over the thumbnail, but the urls are included in a javascript variable in a script tag in the body of the page.

Easiest approach to extract the matching animated thumbnail urls from the page would be with a regex something like this:

"(http.+/an_webp/the_video_id/.+)"

[HermanFassett]

Nice, I'll look into it at some point, feel free to pull request if you figure it out

[johtso]

Ah, I see you're already using the ytInitialdata object. It should be in there as this:

"richThumbnail": {
    "movingThumbnailRenderer": {
        "enableHoveredLogging": true,
        "enableOverlay": true,
        "movingThumbnailDetails": {
            "logAsMovingThumbnail": true,
            "thumbnails": [
                {
                    "height": 180,
                    "url": "https://i.ytimg.com/an_webp/mX_fQyxKiPQ/mqdefault_6s.webp?du=3000&sqp=CKylo4MG&rs=AOn4CLAJhoHhnxxaA_M2UDkLjamaqy4ViQ",
                    "width": 320
                }
            ]
        }
    }
}