Introduction
The Brightcove platform APIs are RESTful APIs that allow you to get and send data to various parts of the Brightcove platform. Some examples of use include:
- Ingesting videos into Video Cloud
- Managing videos on Video Cloud
- Creating custom analytics reports for a Video Cloud account
- Creating and managing Brightcove players
- Creating Brightcove Live jobs for live streaming
- Creating transcoding jobs for videos in Zencoder
RESTful APIs
If you are not familiar with RESTful APIs, they have some common characteristics:
- Requests are made by sending an HTTP request, using different methods such as
GET,POST,PATCH, andDELETE, depending on the kind of operation performed. - The response is usually in the form of a JSON string, which any programming language can parse into native data types.
The beauty of REST is that RESTful APIs are not dependent on any particular programming language. As long as you can make HTTP requests and parse JSON responses, the API does not care what language you are using.
CORS
One thing you do need to be aware of is that most of the Brightcove APIs are not CORS enabled. You can read the linked document for a full explanation, but the upshot is that API requests in almost all cases cannot be made from a web client (a web app, for instance).
It is still possible to use web interfaces with the APIs by routing the API requests through a server-side proxy, as we do in many of the sample apps on this site, and explain in Using the REST APIs.
You can make requests from your own internet-connected computer using tools like cURL, Postman, or Insomnia
Authentication
Authentication for most platform APIs is via a temporary OAuth2 access token. A few APIs use a permanent api key or policy key instead. See the documentation on the individual APIs for details.
Video Cloud APIs
| API | Use | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMS | Manage videos and playlists (uncached) | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Dynamic Ingest | Add, replace, and retranscode videos and assets | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Analytics | Obtain analytics data for your Video Cloud accounts | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Data Collection | Send analytics data to Video Cloud from non-Brightcove players | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Playback | Access video and playlist data from clients | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Audience | Obtain audience data for your Video Cloud accounts | Landing Page | Overview | Reference | |
| Social | Obtain history and status of sharing to social platforms for your Video Cloud videos | Landing Page | Overview | Reference | |
| SSAI | Manage ad configurations for server-side ad integration (VOD) | Landing Page | Overview | Reference | |
| Ingest Profiles | Manage ingest profiles for your account | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| In-Page Experiences (REST) | Manage your In-Page Experiences | Landing Page | Overview | Reference | |
| OAuth | Get client credentials and access tokens for the other RESTful APIs | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Policy | Generate policy keys that are used to access the Playback API | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Player Management | Create and manage Brightcove Players | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Delivery System | Management and deployment for player related files | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
Brightcove Player (stand-alone) APIs
| API | Use | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player Management | Create and manage Brightcove Players | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| Delivery System | Management and deployment for player related files | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
| OAuth | Get client credentials and access tokens for the other RESTful APIs | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
Brightcove Live API
| API | Use | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live | Create and manage live streams | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
Zencoder API
| API | Use | Landing Page | Overview | Quick Start | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zencoder | Transcode VOD and live stream assets | Landing Page | Quick Start | Encoding Settings | Reference |