Not able to meet all your requirements with a ready-made online video platform? Want to build a customized video experience? Don't have the time or the resources to create an entirely new online video platform from scratch? Then you are in luck. Video APIs come to your rescue!
Wondering what Video APIs are and how do they help reduce your hassle? We will go over exactly that in this article today! Hold on tight as there is a lot of information coming through (don’t worry we’ll ease you into it!).
What is an API?
Application Programming Interface (API) helps different software communicate with each other – gaining access to a service or system by bringing in one software or application’s services into another.
API is basically a messenger in the middle sending information back and forth between the two solutions.
Want to add a payment service to your app? Stream videos? Add Google Maps? There are different types of APIs for these and a lot more services provided by various software solutions to help you enhance your software with external functionalities.
This way you won’t have to build the entire software infrastructure yourself which will take ages and require an entire in-house IT team to be involved.
What is a Video API?
In layman’s terms, “Video API” is a type of API that allows you to flexibly bring in a variety of advanced video services to your website, software, or application. This is done by getting access to the Video APIs of an online video platform like VIDIZMO.
These services can support a lot – from video streaming to content management to video delivery.
The best part is you can essentially bring in these customized capabilities to enhance your application without needing to build it all from scratch. You don’t even need to know how it is being built actually. API helps you utilize these capabilities without worrying about it all.
But why use Video APIs? It will make your user experience a lot more engaging – from content retention to interaction to conversion, video boosts up all your metrics helping you meet your goals without getting into the nitty-gritty. Essentially you can get custom video services in your software without having to build the entire video streaming infrastructure.
Do You Know...
One of the Leading Counties in the US uses VIDIZMO Video APIs to Process Petabytes of Data Stored on Laserfiche CMS – Contact Our Team if You Have a Similar Project
Types of Video APIs
There are a ton of Video APIs for different types of video workflows, which are further distributed in different functions. Let us explore the three major categories of Video APIs:
Video Streaming API
Video streaming APIs allow can handle all the backend technicalities (video storage, encoding, content delivery of your video application leaving you free to focus on the business-critical operations. The API gives you the flexibility of choosing the CMS and video player of your choice.
Video Player API
Video player APIs allow you to either embed desired videos on your site or build apps/video-based sites with a video player widget from an online video platform.
Video Content Management API
This category of video APIs helps you bring all the various video content management capabilities of an online video platform to your software.
For instance, bringing various video streaming, categorizing and search capabilities to your LMS, enabling video-based learning.
Online Video Platform or Video API: What to Choose?
Online Video Platforms (OVP) are of a variety of types, two main ones being:
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Public Video Sharing Sites: These include the likes of YouTube and Dailymotion – designed to cater to content creators, creative professionals, and video marketing. They support public live and on-demand streaming and basic video management capabilities with minimal security.
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Enterprise Video Platform (Private Corporate YouTube): Gartner-recognized VIDIZMO is the best example of this type – it is a one-stop shop for all video needs, served through a centralized self-service YouTube-like video platform with security and broad compliance coverage. It supports live and on-demand video streaming for internal and external audiences as well as a whole suite of advanced AI-powered enterprise video content management capabilities.
Online video platforms are ready-made pre-packaged solutions. On the other hand, Video APIs allow you to bring specific video services into your own pre-built application.
In terms of picking an option, there is no right or wrong answer. It is simply about your use case, current requirements and what you already have on-hand.
If you have all your users on a certain application, you can simply use APIs to integrate an online video platform with it. Some OVPs already have out-of-the-box integration with popular applications like Zoom, MS Teams, Blackboard, SharePoint, etc. so you won’t have to even go through the hassle of using Video APIs in this case.
If you want a centralized video platform with all your organizational content in one place – all secure, governed and managed through automated capabilities – you might be in need of a Private Corporate YouTube.
VIDIZMO’s Online Video Platform with Video API Support
VIDIZMO – a Private Corporate YouTube – supports live and on-demand video streaming with AI-powered end-to-end video content management capabilities, including:
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Scalable storage
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Automatic transcoding
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Automatic transcription with translation
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Smart search (platform-wide and in-video)
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Advanced video analytics
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Limited sharing capabilities
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Content Segregation in:
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Different user groups
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Multiple autonomous video portals with unique branding and separate security and admin controls
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Enterprise security capabilities like SSO integration with SCIM support, end-to-end content encryption, DRM support, and other custom security controls
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Other features include: in-video interactive elements like quizzes, HTML5 online video player, custom portal and player branding capabilities, and much more
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Out-of-the-box video platform integrations with major business apps, including video conferencing apps like Zoom, LMS like Blackboard, CMS like HubSpot, and Analytics tools like Google Analytics
With that being said, many more such custom integrations are possible with VIDIZMO’s Video APIs available through professional services with complete support from VIDIZMO team.
VIDIZMO APIs are based on JSON REST or RESTful architectural style, benefits of which are that:
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It is lightweight and fast as they rely on HTTP standards
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It provides a great deal of flexibility and scalability
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Client and Server are kept separate – hence you can easily work on different components independently
Through VIDIZMO’s flexible API integration, you can basically access all of VIDIZMO’s application resources in your platform or any other external business application like any CMS, LMS, CRM, HRM, ERP, or any other systems.
Hence, you can get access to:
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Video streaming APIs
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VIDIZMO Player Plugins
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Request information regarding Users and Groups
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Externally send viewing analytics, quiz results and engagement reports
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And other video content management APIs like search, tag, categorize, and much more
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Or even integrate with your own preferred Cloud Storage Services provider
With these video APIs, some possible use cases are:
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You can create your own iOS or Android video-based application
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Integrate VIDIZMO’s capabilities in an existing application like VIDIZMO’s integration with Laserfiche, a records management system
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Have your video analytics like engagement trends visible and available for analyses on another app
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Upload and process (transcoding, AI, etc.) large amounts of video data stored on any system or storage (for instance, Zoom recordings or videos on blob storage, on-premise storage, etc.).
For Technical Documentation: What are the right VIDIZMO APIs for Integration with your Platform?
Widgets, if Not API?
If that’s not enough, VIDIZMO’s portal is actually a beautiful layout of various web components stitched together in a seamless fabric of HTML and CSS. This is why VIDIZMO also allows you to simply use various Widget integrations to display any of our portal’s elements on your website or your application. Learn all about VIDIZMO Application Widget in this detailed help article.
Contact the VIDIZMO team today to learn more about the Video APIs supported – get a free demo and ask away any queries you have!
