Do the HTML open graph images ("og:image") on VODs change over time?

Help / Off-topic
1

Hey all.

I see that Twitch is using the Open Graph protocol in order to show a thumbnail of a video on websites, such as Facebook and Twitch, etc.

However, I have noticed these URLs change over time.

For example, I am taking Lirik - a popular Twitch broadcaster - as an example now.

On recent videos, the og:image URL looks like:

//static-cdn.jtvnw.net/v1/AUTH_system/vods_b0a9/lirik_23473896608_535789428/thumb/thumb0-480x320.jpg

But it seems like over time they are changed to, something like:

//static-cdn.jtvnw.net/s3_vods/cc99e84827_lirik_23393711584_530777864/thumb/thumb0-480x320.jpg

We have noticed, since these images are being changed over time, the thumbnails obviously breaks if they are used on Facebook pages, tweets, on our own gallery sites, etc.

If you compare these URLs with YouTube they have a more straight forward solution:

//i.ytimg.com/vi/[video-id]/default.jpg

Does anyone have more information about this, and/or maybe there is a way to to get a “permalink” of these video thumbnails so that they don’t break over time?

2

I think what you are seeing is some older vods that used a previous system to get thumbs and are stored as such/not updated.

Is that correct?

3

I am not really in a position to distinguish what current and previous systems Twitch has =)

4

I mean is the vod you are looking at should the first URL an old vod and the second URL being from a newer vod?

5

Ah ok.

I mean is the vod you are looking at should the first URL an old vod and the second URL being from a newer vod?

No, its the same VOD.

Here is is an example:

This URL was captured October 17:

https://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/v1/AUTH_system/vods_955f/lirik_23393711584_530777864/thumb/thumb0-480x320.jpg

But it is currently broken.

When I find the original video:

https://www.twitch.tv/lirik/v/94527276

I see the og:image has been changed to:

https://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/s3_vods/cc99e84827_lirik_23393711584_530777864/thumb/thumb0-480x320.jpg

As you can see its almost identical URLs, but /static-cdn.jtvnw.net/v1/AUTH_system/ has been changed to /s3_vods/.

I don’t know why the original URL is now broken and if you look at the og:image now, its a different image.

So my question is. Does Twitch break these images over time, and replace them with new URLs?

6

Also if you just look at LIRIK’s video page, you can see that the different thumbnails have different systems.

https://www.twitch.tv/lirik/videos/all

7

Ah gotcha. sounds like a bug for @DallasNChains to poke upstairs

8

Thanks for pinging me, @BarryCarlyon! I’ll check on this.

9

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