ACF oEmbed – Youtube videos thumbnail set on featured image

• Anderson

• August 16, 2018 at 12:27 am

Hey, guys, you all right?

Would it be possible or would you be wanting too much, a way to use the thumbnail of a YouTube video as a featured image automatically?

If this already exists could direct me, my English is not very good to find topics with this type of content, sorry.

Could someone humbly help me?

• lena-wppro

• August 16, 2018 at 1:01 am

Hi,

The easiest way is to create an image custom field and to use it as featured image.

Or, you can refer to this topic https://support.advancedcustomfields.com/forums/topic/youtube-thumbnail-object-with-oembed-field/

• deset

• January 29, 2020 at 7:05 am

I’m guessing you already solved this, but for future reference, this is what I use and it works great. Depending on your own setup, you may want to add more conditional statements to trigger only on certain post types.

function generate_video_thumbnail($post_id, $post) {
	$current_post_thumbnail = get_post_thumbnail_id( $post_id );
    if ( '' !== $current_post_thumbnail ) {
        return;
    }
	
	$url = get_field('video_embed', $post_id, false);
	$oembed = _wp_oembed_get_object();
	$provider = $oembed->get_provider($url);
	$oembed_data = $oembed->fetch( $provider, $url );
	$thumbnail = $oembed_data->thumbnail_url;
	$title = get_the_title($post_id);
	
	if($url) {
		$image = media_sideload_image( $thumbnail, $post_id, $title, 'id' );
		set_post_thumbnail( $post_id, $image );
	}
}
add_action('save_post', 'generate_video_thumbnail', 12, 3);

• marbaque

• July 9, 2020 at 4:12 pm

Hi @deset I am trying to set this to work, but I don’t see it. I don’t get errors either. Should I include something in the template too?

I am using custom post types… I wonder if that is it.

• aozimkov

• December 22, 2021 at 10:19 am

Hi @deset!
Thanks a lot for this great solution! It works for me but contains one missprint. If I understood the get_post_thumbnail_id() sourcecode this function returns int and can’t return empty string.
I’ve changed
if ( '' !== $current_post_thumbnail )
to
if ( 0 !== $current_post_thumbnail )
And it works!

@marbaque this may be the cause for the problem you faced with, please check this

full @deset ‘s code with this fix:

function generate_video_thumbnail($post_id, $post) {
	$current_post_thumbnail = get_post_thumbnail_id( $post_id );
    if ( 0 !== $current_post_thumbnail ) {
        return;
    }
	
	$url = get_field('video_embed', $post_id, false);
	$oembed = _wp_oembed_get_object();
	$provider = $oembed->get_provider($url);
	$oembed_data = $oembed->fetch( $provider, $url );
	$thumbnail = $oembed_data->thumbnail_url;
	$title = get_the_title($post_id);
	
	if($url) {
		$image = media_sideload_image( $thumbnail, $post_id, $title, 'id' );
		set_post_thumbnail( $post_id, $image );
	}
}
add_action('save_post', 'generate_video_thumbnail', 12, 3);