New YouTube API Means YouTube Anywhere
Date : 2008 03 12 Category : Tech & Development ProgrammableWeb
The most popular video API is about to become more popular. As just announced by Googe’s Jim Patterson on the YouTube blog, YouTube Everywhere, the YouTube API has just been upgraded with some very powerful new features. So much so that, as Jim describes, “It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device.” This release will dramatically open the door for developers to build on top of their ubiquitous platform. We have updated our YouTube API profile with technical details.
More from the announcement:
We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube “cloud,” managed by us. We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause. Meanwhile, we provide full access to our substantial video library, enabling you to attract users and enhance the experience on your site. It’s all free, and it’s available to everyone, starting now.
From an API features perspective, here are the key enhancements:
Upload videos and video responses to YouTube Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc) Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through softwareGoogle’s developer documentation now includes diagrams that outlines some of the upload application flows:
And as they describe, the new API capabilities are already being put to use by third parties:
The number of possible new applications is endless. Electronic Arts has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube. The University of California, Berkeley is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube. Animoto enables its users to create personalized, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube. Tivo is providing its users a rich and highly participative YouTube viewing experience on the television.
The YouTube is certainly the most widely used video API with 224 YouTube mashups in our directory today (or via here). Use our new Video API and Mashup Dashboard and the Video API and Mashup RSS feed to keep up with the latest in this market.