api - Video Posts with Auto Thumbnail(Like in Facebook) in Tumblr.com

Question

I'd like to find out how Tumblr retrieves video thumbnails.

Normal video posts (not using API) when viewed from the dashboard or /tagged/ filters, some sites's video shows thumbnails, some doesn't show up.

Works for http://www.youtube.com and http://www.vimeo.com.

However, http://www.ted.com and http://www.slideshare.net thumbnails doesn't show up.

I was wondering if any of the Tumblr devs can enlighten me on the process how and where they get the thumbnail data from. Is there a general method for retrieval that by that I can conform a document structure to?

It would also be great if the API allows you to set thumbnail url too, sort of like facebook's opengraph image meta data.

Answer 1

Tumblr Video Thumbnails

My understanding of {VideoThumbnailURL} is as follows:

This variable will include any related thumbnails to a video, served directly from the provider of the video.

Tumblr itself isn't generating the thumbnails. Below is the returned URL from a test, using {VideoThumbnailURL} and the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0y4G1tNb1M

http://img.youtube.com/vi/i0y4G1tNb1M/hqdefault.jpg

To answer your question, the provider of the video would have to generate the thumbnails and Tumblr would need to support / integrate these on the Dashboard.

Easy way to test if a provider is supported, create a video post and add your embed code. If the message preview not available appears, the provider doesn't support thumbnails and / or Tumblr doesn't support this provider.

Providers with Thumbnail Support

http://blip.tv/

http://www.dailymotion.com/

http://www.metacafe.com/

http://www.youtube.com

http://www.vimeo.com

Providers without Thumbnail Support

https://vine.co

http://www.ted.com

http://www.slideshare.net

http://www.veoh.com/

http://www.twitch.tv/