Session thumbnail URL from UUID

Eric Phetteplace

I'm creating a web gallery that will sometimes contain Panopto embeds. I'd like to make it as easy as possible on my content authors, so if they provide a Panopto embed URL then I will determine a good thumbnail URL without asking them to find one or upload an image. My question is: if I know the ID of a session, am I able to construct a link to its thumbnail?

Viewing the Panopto interface, it looks like the answer is "yes." We have a commencement video with ID 452b767b-0035-470b-af66-ad2101821e06 and I see it's thumbnail URL is https://ccarts.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Services/FrameGrabber.svc/FrameRedirect?objectId=452b767b-0035-470b-af66-ad2101821e06&mode=Delivery&random=0.355176641305525&usePng=False

There's a random float in there which changes every time the UI loads. But if I drop the random parameter, the thumbnail still loads: https://ccarts.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Services/FrameGrabber.svc/FrameRedirect?objectId=452b767b-0035-470b-af66-ad2101821e06&mode=Delivery&usePng=False

I can drop the usePng parameter and the URL still loads, too. That parameter doesn't seem to do anything; you get a JPG or PNG thumbnail depending on the video, but the value of this parameter doesn't seem to affect anything.

But I digress; I don't really care about PNGs. All I want to know is: does the URL formula {domain}/Panopto/Services/FrameGrabber.svc/FrameRedirect?objectId=${ID}&mode=Delivery consistently deliver the $ID video's thumbnail? Is this something I can rely on? Do I have to include a random float for some reason? Is there anything in the APIs about thumbnails? I didn't see any documentation of this feature but I also didn't look for very long. I realize this may just be a support ticket but I figured the information could benefit other people, too.

Caitlin McCabe

Hi All,

I checked in with our API team for guidance on this, and they provided the following information:

"The Thumbnail URL may change in the future without notice, however we do provide it when getting information about a session using our REST API's Get Session method: https://demo.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/api/Docs/index.html#/Sessions/Sessions_GetSessionById"

I hope this is helpful, please let me know if you have any additional questions - we're always happy to help!

Best wishes,

Cait

Michael Espey

I'd be interested in an "official" answer to this as well! I've used the frame grabber thing before for some things here and there. It seems to work as I expected, and with the same observations you had about removing the query strings, but since it isn't a publically documented thing I have a feeling it is potentially subject to change without documentation/notification of said change.

Charles Barbour

I wonder if changing the random value could (theoretically) change the thumbnail? Maybe that lets it select a random spot in the first second of the video?

Eric Phetteplace

From my tests, changing the random value doesn't change the thumbnail, though perhaps it's possible. I think it's some kind of cache-busting measure for the Panopto web UI.