Preview YouTube videos as thumbnail images before loading them. This preview helps you save bandwidth and time.
By just watching the image sequence you can get an idea of what exactly is the video about and you can verify whether the video is the one that you are looking for or its just a tricky boring one.
YouTube Thumbs – Install from Chrome App Store
YouTube Thumbs is a Chrome Extension, which will display a sequence of still images of the particular video when users hover or point on the video thumbnail.
It shows three images that YouTube usually creates for any video, in sequence like an animated GIF. This should be of great help for those who have limited data plan or slow connection speed.
Manual Method for all Browsers
If you are not using Google Chrome or if you don’t want to install add-on, then here is a method to obtain thumbnail images for YouTube Videos. But this method is not so easy and you have make some copy-paste works.
1. Right Click on YouTube video title and “Copy the link address”
2. In the URL, find the Video ID, which should be something like this (Text in Red is the ID)
3. Now you can use this ID in the following URLs to get three frame stills
# Image 1: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Video ID/1.jpg
# Image 2: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Video ID/2.jpg
# Image 3: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Video ID/3.jpg
# Image 2: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/k_IfoCUHyeo/2.jpg
# Image 3: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/k_IfoCUHyeo/3.jpg
This method can also be used to view Private YouTube Videos. YouTube keeps thumbnails public even when the video is marked as Private.
