使用jQuery jsonp请求:

<script type="text/javascript">
    $.ajax({
        type:'GET',
        url: 'http://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/' + video_id + '.json',
        jsonp: 'callback',
        dataType: 'jsonp',
        success: function(data){
            var thumbnail_src = data[0].thumbnail_large;
            $('#thumb_wrapper').append('<img src="' + thumbnail_src + '"/>');
        }
    });
</script>

<div id="thumb_wrapper"></div>

下面是一个如何在ASP中做同样的事情的例子。NET使用c#。请随意使用不同的错误捕获图像:)

public string GetVimeoPreviewImage(string vimeoURL)
{
    try
    {
        string vimeoUrl = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Server.HtmlEncode(vimeoURL);
        int pos = vimeoUrl.LastIndexOf(".com");
        string videoID = vimeoUrl.Substring(pos + 4, 8);

        XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.Load("http://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/" + videoID + ".xml");
        XmlElement root = doc.DocumentElement;
        string vimeoThumb = root.FirstChild.SelectSingleNode("thumbnail_medium").ChildNodes[0].Value;
        string imageURL = vimeoThumb;
        return imageURL;
    }
    catch
    {
        //cat with cheese on it's face fail
        return "http://bestofepicfail.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/cheese_fail.jpg";
    }
}

注意:当被请求时，你的API请求应该像这样:http://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/32660708.xml

function getVimeoInfo($link)
 {
    if (preg_match('~^http://(?:www\.)?vimeo\.com/(?:clip:)?(\d+)~', $link, $match)) 
    {
        $id = $match[1];
    }
    else
    {
        $id = substr($link,10,strlen($link));
    }

    if (!function_exists('curl_init')) die('CURL is not installed!');
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/$id.php");
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);
    $output = unserialize(curl_exec($ch));
    $output = $output[0];
    curl_close($ch);
    return $output;
}`

//在下面的函数传递缩略图url。

function save_image_local($thumbnail_url)
    {

         //for save image at local server
         $filename = time().'_hbk.jpg';
         $fullpath = '../../app/webroot/img/videos/image/'.$filename;

         file_put_contents ($fullpath,file_get_contents($thumbnail_url));

        return $filename;
    }

更新:此解决方案于2018年12月停止工作。

我也在找同样的事情，看起来这里的大多数答案都过时了，因为Vimeo API v2已弃用。

我的PHP 2¢:

$vidID     = 12345 // Vimeo Video ID
$tnLink = json_decode(file_get_contents('https://vimeo.com/api/oembed.json?url=https%3A//vimeo.com/' . $vidID))->thumbnail_url;

通过上面的链接，你将得到Vimeo默认缩略图的链接。

如果你想使用不同大小的图像，你可以添加如下内容:

$tnLink = substr($tnLink, strrpos($tnLink, '/') + 1);
$tnLink = substr($tnLink, 0, strrpos($tnLink, '_')); // You now have the thumbnail ID, which is different from Video ID

// And you can use it with link to one of the sizes of crunched by Vimeo thumbnail image, for example:
$tnLink = 'https://i.vimeocdn.com/filter/overlay?src0=https%3A%2F%2Fi.vimeocdn.com%2Fvideo%2F' . $tnLink    . '_1280x720.jpg&src1=https%3A%2F%2Ff.vimeocdn.com%2Fimages_v6%2Fshare%2Fplay_icon_overlay.png';

function parseVideo(url) {
    // - Supported YouTube URL formats:
    //   - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8
    //   - http://youtu.be/My2FRPA3Gf8
    //   - https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/My2FRPA3Gf8
    // - Supported Vimeo URL formats:
    //   - http://vimeo.com/25451551
    //   - http://player.vimeo.com/video/25451551
    // - Also supports relative URLs:
    //   - //player.vimeo.com/video/25451551

    url.match(/(http:|https:|)\/\/(player.|www.)?(vimeo\.com|youtu(be\.com|\.be|be\.googleapis\.com))\/(video\/|embed\/|watch\?v=|v\/)?([A-Za-z0-9._%-]*)(\&\S+)?/);

    if (RegExp.$3.indexOf('youtu') > -1) {
        var type = 'youtube';
    } else if (RegExp.$3.indexOf('vimeo') > -1) {
        var type = 'vimeo';
    }

    return {
        type: type,
        id: RegExp.$6
    };
}

function getVideoThumbnail(url, cb) {
    var videoObj = parseVideo(url);
    if (videoObj.type == 'youtube') {
        cb('//img.youtube.com/vi/' + videoObj.id + '/maxresdefault.jpg');
    } else if (videoObj.type == 'vimeo') {
        $.get('http://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/' + videoObj.id + '.json', function(data) {
            cb(data[0].thumbnail_large);
        });
    }
}

使用Ruby，你可以做以下事情，比如:

url                      = "http://www.vimeo.com/7592893"
vimeo_video_id           = url.scan(/vimeo.com\/(\d+)\/?/).flatten.to_s               # extract the video id
vimeo_video_json_url     = "http://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/%s.json" % vimeo_video_id   # API call

# Parse the JSON and extract the thumbnail_large url
thumbnail_image_location = JSON.parse(open(vimeo_video_json_url).read).first['thumbnail_large'] rescue nil