For a project, I’ve been working a bit with “web 2.0 video services”. That is, YouTube, Gogle Video, MySpace videos and similar.

So far, the only one I can actually use for my cause is YouTube; Google Video should be possible, whereas MySpace and e.g. MyVideo.de apparently lack the functionality I need.

But the functionality I need is pretty simple: thumbnails.

For YouTube, I can use their API to query metadata on videos such as viewing counts, title, description, tags - and a thumbnail URL (all I’m lacking is some information on whether the thumbnail URL is permanent, i.e. if I can cache it, or bound to change).

For Google Video, there apparently is some way to do the same - digg is reported to have Thumbnails for YouTube and Google Video.

Dear Lazyweb, if you have some information on how to get thumbnails (and other metadata such as title, description, tags) for other video services, please send me an email to Erich@debian.org. Thanks!

[Update: revver.com has Thumbnails and some API. It works with the beta flash plugin and epiphany.]