7 Video APIs That Can Help You Integrate Video into Your Applications

What Is a Video API?

A video application program interface (API) provides real-time video collaborators with consistent access to a scalable server infrastructure. 

Video APIs allow website or mobile application users to collaborate on video experiences, addressing the challenges of hosting, serving, uploading, synching, etc. The advantage of using APIs opens the door to new marketing and advertising channels, revenue streams, user data traffic, and customer engagement, retention, and acquisition.

Types of Video APIs

Here are some of the main types of video APIs:

Media Management API 

This type of API manages the manipulation, organization and storage of video content. There are different media management APIs handling different aspects of video uploads, enrichment, and editing. For example, there are specific media management APIs for tasks like creating video thumbnails, adding subtitles and captions, and integrating smart search capabilities into video libraries.

Encoding and transcoding and APIs also fall under the category of media management. These APIs help ensure that videos play smoothly in any format on any device. 

Streaming and Publishing API 

This type of API handles the delivery of video content, including the time and location. A streaming and publishing API can place cached versions of a video across globally distributed servers in a Content Delivery Network (CDN), reducing buffering time so viewers don’t have to wait for the content to load.  

Additional examples of APIs in this category include a scheduling API (which launches videos according to specified times or immediately when they become available) and an SEO API that helps promote videos in searches.   

Media Analytics API 

This type of API provides all the necessary information about video usage, bandwidth, and user playback experience. A media analytics API lets you track user engagement and see how viewers interact with your content, or if they add their own content.

Top 7 Video APIs

YouTube API

YouTube is a video streaming and sharing platform by Google. Globally, it’s the most commonly used platform. Google has a large developer community. They also provide clear documentation with relevant examples and code samples. 

Features: 

Developers can readily integrate YouTube functionalities into their web and mobile applications. You can use the YouTube API to play YouTube content straight from your application, manage playlists, access video analytics, and search for content. Developers may use this API through two kinds of calls—XML-RPC and REST.    

Vimeo API

Vimeo is a free video platform that enables content creators to share, monetize, and upload their content. Vimeo provides documentation on implementing the API into the application. 

Features: 

Developers can use Vimeo API to access Vimeo’s features, integrating them into their applications. Vimeo employs the OAuth 2 specification. Meaning, developers send their users to a Vimeo authentication URL. There they can choose to deny or accept access.

Cloudinary Video API

The Cloudinary video API lets you upload videos, display them, and manipulate them Cloudinary’s image and video platform. It provides a reference of parameters, attributes, and methods you can employ when using the VideoPlayer or VideoPlayer objects and any related <video> tag.

Features:

• Real-time video transcoding—transcode videos to all formats or automatically deliver them in an effective codec and format—with no lag time or manual tasks.  
• Content-aware compression—play smoothly and accelerate loading via automated encoding of the settings and adjustment  of the quality-compression level. This process is done in keeping with the content.
• On-the-fly video transformation—transform videos by adding images and video overlays, automatically fit videos to graphic designs, trim content, or add captions.

WeVideo API

WeVideo is an online video editor. You can use this editor to create, capture, share, and view high-quality videos.

Features:

Developers can use WeVideo API to integrate and customize video editing capabilities into their applications. You can employ this API to engage customers, drive traffic, and provide value-added services via an embedded online video editor. This editor integrates with your media repository and mobile or web application.

Twitch API

Twitch is a live streaming video platform that mainly focuses on streaming gaming videos. Twitch provides detailed documentation. It also has a large developer community that can answer most questions about the API. The Twitch API is free.

Features: 

Developers can use the Twitch API to access the data needed to build tools.  Creators can use these tools to increase their audience. Developers can integrate Twitch capabilities into their mobile or web application using this API. Twitch supports OIDC and OAuth 2.0, which lets your application perform actions in place of a Twitch account or gather information about a user’s account.

Netflix API

Netflix is a subscription service for viewing movies and TV episodes on your device. Netflix offers comprehensive documentation and resources so you can implement the API into your mobile or web application. This API is free.

Features: 

Netflix maintains thousands of movie types in its database. Developers can use Netflix API to access user information and movie ratings. They can also access information such as rental history and queues. The subscriber can use OAuth standard security to manage which applications may access the service in their place.

Ziggeo API

Ziggeo is a cloud-based video technology organization, offering asynchronous video APIs. Ziggeo offers detailed documentation, so developers can readily integrate the API.

Features: 

Developers can use Ziggeo API to add playback and video recording into their application. Ziggeo API supports several SDKs so that developers can embed a video player and a recorder in the browser, both desktop, and mobile. It supports WebRTC recording and Flash recording. On the server-side, Ziggeo’s SDKs let developers access all Ziggeo resources through a RESTful API.

Conclusion

In this article, I explained the basics of video APIs, explained the differences between media management, streaming, and media analytics APIs, and reviewed seven video APIs that can help you integrate video with your applications:

• YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, and Netflix APIs—each of these lets you add, manage, and stream videos in the respective video platform.
• Cloudinary Video API—lets you store video content, perform graphical transformations, convert video into different formats, and more.
• WeVideo API—lets you perform operations in the WeVideo online video editor.
• Ziggeo API—provides several SDKs that allow you to embed a video player and recorder into browser-based, desktop, and mobile applications.

I hope this will be useful as you learn to integrate rich media content into your websites and web applications.