If you go to !videos@lemmy.world and scroll you’ll see some of the posts have a youtube thumbnail image, but not all.
I wanna post YouTube videos, but no one seems to engage much without a thumbnail, which makes sense, but I’m not sure what would result in the post actually having a thumbnail
If anyone has advice or guidance I’d appreciate it :) Thanks!
EDIT: so far it seems like it’s potentially a combination of what version of lemmy the posters account is running, and how that instance is configured…
It depends on what youtube is willing to provide. It seems more likely to provide a thumbnail if you use a youtu.be link than a youtube.com link.
Instances running Lemmy from 0.19.4 onwards (I think) provide the option of providing a separate thumbnail manually, which is useful, but your instance is on 0.19.3.
I tried again with a youtu.be link and unfortunately no dice, so it seems it might be an instance issue, I’m gonna go take a look at the videos comm and see if there’s anyone on .world who posted and got a thumbnail. I might also try again from my .ee account
Okay so it seems like the only people getting thumbnails on !videos@lemmy.world are from shitjustworks.
No dice on using my .ee account though, that didn’t seem to result in a thumbnail either. But in the app I’m using, when on my .ee account there’s a field to put in a thumbnail URL which is interesting
I dunno, but it depends on the instance. Here’s a screenshot from lemmus.org:
And here’s the same community seen from lemmy.sdf.org:
Interesting, so I guess maybe the reason shitjustsworks users posting on !videos@lemmy.world are showing up as thumbnails for me is because their instance is getting the thumbnail and that’s federating to me on .world
Here it is from lemmy.ca (sorted by new):
Instances running 0.19.5 (I think) allow manually adding a thumbnail.
I extract them from https://youtube-thumbnail-grabber.com/ and manually add them in.
Really annoying.
Or shift+right click on the unplayed video and copy image link to get the thumbnail.
I’ve been doing it manually because otherwise nobody watches it.
Will need to try this. Grabbing the thumbnail via an external site is annoying.
Rate Limiting?
I have no clue what’s different, but viewing the community using my instance shows thumbnails for nearly everything.
Most of them have it for me, but I just posted a video to the Souls-like comm and it doesn’t have one, which is really what I’m trying to fix :/
U can configure ur instance to proxy thumbnails so u cant just scoop up ips from users directly. Youtube imposes strict rate limmits on ips hence if some wont load. I assume idk for certain tho.
