Overview: Platform APIs

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
Integrating the Brightcove platform with a CMS or other system
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, and DELETE, 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 Authentication for Brightcove APIs for more detail.

Video Cloud APIs

Video Cloud APIs
API	Use	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Analytics	Obtain analytics data for your Brightcove accounts	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Audience	Obtain audience data for your Brightcove accounts	Landing Page	Overview		Reference
CMS	Manage videos and playlists (uncached)	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Cross Device Resume	Allows you to read the playhead position for a viewer to let them resume playing from where they left off	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Data Collection	Send analytics data to Video Cloud from non-Brightcove players	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Delivery Rules	Create custom rules to control how your content is delivered to the viewer	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Delivery System	Management and deployment for player related files	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Dynamic Ingest	Add, replace, and retranscode videos and assets	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Images	Transform images - resize, rotate, etc.	Landing Page	Overview	N/A	Images API Reference Images Token API Reference
In-Page Experiences (REST)	Manage your In-Page Experiences	Landing Page	Overview		Reference
Ingest Profiles	Manage ingest profiles for your account	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
OAuth	Get client credentials and access tokens for the other RESTful APIs	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Playback	Access video and playlist data from clients	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Player Management	Create and manage Brightcove Players	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Policy	Generate policy keys that are used to access the Playback API	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
SSAI	Manage ad configurations for server-side ad integration (VOD)	Landing Page	Overview		Reference
Social	Obtain history and status of sharing to social platforms for your Video Cloud videos	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Social	Create feeds for any kind of syndication	Landing Page	Overview Feed Syndication API Overview	N/A	Configuration API Reference Feed Syndication API Reference

Brightcove Cloud Playout APIs

Brightcove Player APIs
API	Use	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
Channel Manager	Manage your Cloud Playout channels	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
Cloud Playout CMS Interactions	Manage your Cloud Playout playlists and videos	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
EPG	Create and retrieve an Electronic Programming Guide for a channel created in Studio	Landing Page	Overview	Reference

Brightcove Playback Restriction APIs

Brightcove Playback Restriction APIs
API	Use	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
Audit	Generate a daily access report for your account's Playback Authorization Service usage	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
Blacklist	Manage your JWT tokens which are blacklisted and considered not valid for license requests	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
Devices	Enable device limits for video playback	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
Concurrency Service	Allow concurrency mid-stream checks without DRM	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
Key	Manage your public keys related to JWTs with Brightcove	Landing Page	Overview	Reference
Playback Rights	Define and manage Playback Rights	Landing Page	Overview	Reference

Brightcove Player (stand-alone) APIs

Brightcove Player APIs
API	Use	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
Player Management	Create and manage Brightcove Players	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference

Brightcove Live API

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

Zencoder API
API	Use	Landing Page	Overview	Quick Start	Reference
Zencoder	Transcode VOD and live stream assets	Landing Page	Quick Start	Encoding Settings	Reference