Video cannot be played when thumbnail request returns a 404

[gummybuns]

Describe the bug
Certain thumbnails return a 404 when hitting /vi/:id/maxresdefault.jpg
The 404 prevents any thumbnail from loading, preventing the video from being playable.

To Reproduce
Video id 1gWd-FHfAQE does this for me

Expected behavior
A thumbnail should be loaded or a fallback image should be used in the event of a 404

Screenshots
N/A

Additional context
Hi yes it is another thumbnail not working. I think there is a problem potentially with how you are sorting the thumbnails, I am not really sure.

Many thumbnails are rendering fine, but some are returning a 404, which causes the spinner, which prevents the video from being playable.

For example this video id 1gWd-FHfAQE causes the 404 for me.

What I am noticing is the clipious app is trying to fetch the thumbnail for /vi/1gWd-FHfAQE/maxresdefault.jpg but the invidious web application makes the api request to 1gWd-FHfAQE/maxres.jpg.

I dont think that every youtube video has a maxresdefault.jpg

When I look at the invidious code it looks to me that maxres.jpg is their own construct that will automatically choose the best one available.

When I look at the clipious code it seems that the logic is intentionally preferring maxresdefault over maxres.

If possible it might be best to just always put maxres.jpg at the top and let the server decide which thumbnail to use, or to tweak the compareTo logic such that maxres is preferred to maxresdefault.

This may also be a problem on the invidious side - at least from my server, in the event of a 404 on the thumbnail it seems as if invidious is failing to properly close the connection.

This for example hangs forever despite the logs emitting a 404

curl --verbose "https://<invidious_instance>/vi/1gWd-FHfAQE/maxresdefault.jpg"

Possibly both sides need a proper fix since I dont fully see in your code how a 404 is handled

[torojuro]

I can confirm I frequently encounter this issue. In order to see the video I watch it in the browser directly on the Invidious frontend and the thumbnail is always loaded correctly. The number of videos that don't have it is very high I suppose, because every time I open Clipious to watch a video or whenever I scroll to my subscription feed I often get endless thumbnail loading.

Just 5 minutes ago a friend sent to me a YouTube video and I wasn't able to play it through Clipious (id: t4ibWoPi9RU).

Executing the curl command that @gummybuns wrote, I get a 404 after 1 minute of wait.

curl -LO --verbose "https://<invidious_instance>/vi/t4ibWoPi9RU/maxresdefault.jpg"

Since the Invidious frontend uses maxres.jpg (and it was always available every time I wasn't able to see a video with Clipious), maybe it could be an idea to rely only on that image instead of maxresdefault.jpg?

For the small thumbnails, instead, the Invidious frontend gets mqdefault.jpg.

I do host a vanilla invidious instance, version 2025.09.13-cf019e3, and it's behind a reverse proxy (nginx).

[gummybuns]

i am using nginx as a reverse proxy too @torojuro but mine does not timeout at all it just hangs indefinitely. I am guessing that you maybe have some better timeout settings than I do for your nginx.

i opened this issue on the invidious side since this appears to be a separate issue. I think clipious needs to prioritize maxres.jpg over maxresdefault.jpg here