Analytics

Video Sessions (Analytics)

Normal

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Doug Twitter

Doug Sillars

Tutorials

JavaScript

NodeJS

How much of your video is being watched?  With api.video analytics, we can tell you exactly how much of the video was watched.  In this post, we'll walk through how to parse video session data in order to add up how much of the video was watched in a session.

## A video Session

A video session occurs when an api.video player is opened in a browser.  As long as the same window is used, each viewing of the video will be added to that one session.

You can get a list of your video sessions by using the [analytics endpoint](https://docs.api.video/reference/get_analytics-videos-videoid) for a given videoId. In my code (using NodeJS), it looks something like this:

```
var params = { videoId, metadata, currentPage, pageSize};
  
const result = client.rawStatistics.listVideoSessions(params);
  result.then(function(videos) {
        var sessionList = videos.data;
        console.log("Number of sessions to test " , sessionList.length);

          for(i=0;i<sessionList.length;i++){
            //get each session ID, and figure out how long each session watched the video
            var sessionId = sessionList[i].session.sessionId;
            pageSize = '100';
            console.log(sessionId);

```


The Node endpoint takes my parameters (including the videoId I wish to analyze) and sends it to the ```client.rawStatistics.listVideoSessions``` endpoint.  This returns an array of the sessions that can be analyzed. 

The log will list a count of sessionIds, and then list each sessionId. Here is an example output from this code snippet:

```
Number of sessions to test  8
ps5orCkYsuaMw08btQmsW8vp
ps24iGEi011m9xKPqdTnIOvZ
ps7ODtZR04dfRBQCcarOIhv7
ps19mQmv5CTQwdeb75n8lLWr
ps1UdYeHbp6tQ21vrGUI8gXw
ps6xqBySKoSQfmG4zjcyZtWU
ps3cLLchT0Os75lzXovlCqTe
ps3MpNgw5Ax5EQ4GSAVyODRh
```

## get Session Events

In each session, the video player records each event, and sends it back to api.video.  Using the [Session event](https://docs.api.video/reference/get_analytics-sessions-sessionid-events) API endpoint, we can retrieve each of these events.

```
 var sessionParams = {sessionId, currentPage, pageSize}; const sessionData = client.rawStatistics.listSessionEvents(sessionParams);
    sessionData.then( function(lastSessionData) {
      //this is the session data
      console.log("session events", lastSessionData);

```


The response of this endpoint looks something like this:

```
session events RawStatisticsListPlayerSessionEventsResponse {
  data: [
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'ready',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-17T19:00:54.000Z,
      at: 0,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'play',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-17T19:00:55.000Z,
      at: 0,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'end',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-17T19:02:27.000Z,
      at: 91,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'pause',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-18T10:59:03.000Z,
      at: 91,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    }
  ],

```

In this case, the video is ready at time =0, begins playing, and then reaches the end at 91s.  The window is closed a day later, sending a pause event.  (this is just evidence that your author has a browser tab problem).

Using this data (and with the knowledge that the video is 91 seconds long), it's pretty easy to determine that the entire video was watched in this session.  from ready to the first pause is 91s, so the video must have been completed. But what about more complicated viewing patterns?  Let's look at an example:


```
  data: [
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'ready',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-21T12:33:06.000Z,
      at: 0,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'play',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-21T12:36:13.000Z,
      at: 0,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'pause',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-21T12:36:18.000Z,
      at: 81,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'resume',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-21T12:36:19.000Z,
      at: 81,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'seek.forward',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-21T12:36:19.000Z,
      at: undefined,
      from: 5,
      to: 81
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'end',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-21T12:37:19.000Z,
      at: 91,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    },
    PlayerSessionEvent {
      type: 'pause',
      emittedAt: 2021-06-21T13:10:18.000Z,
      at: 91,
      from: undefined,
      to: undefined
    }
  ],
```


In this session, we again start playing at time = 0, but the next set of events occur at 81s (pause/resume). So the video stopped and restarted at t=81. The next event tells us how we got to t-81 - the view skipped ahead (noted as a 'seek.forward' event) at t=5, to t=81. The video paused because the video had to load, and then from t=81, it played until the end at t=91.  

In this case, even though the playback started at t=0, and ended at t-91, no one would consider this video fully watched, as the viewer skipped 76s of the video.

## Calculating the time watched

To calculate the time watched, we'll add up the time between every play/resume event and every pause/end event.  Then we'll subtract any time in a 'seek.forward' event.

```
 for(j=0; j< numberOfEvents; j++){
        if(lastSessionData.data[j].type == "play" || lastSessionData.data[j].type == "resume"){
          //start time measure
          starttime = lastSessionData.data[j].at;
          counting = true;
          console.log ("start" , starttime);
        }else if(lastSessionData.data[j].type == "pause" || lastSessionData.data[j].type == "end"){
          if(counting){
            endtime = lastSessionData.data[j].at;
            counting=false;
            console.log ("stop" , endtime);
            console.log ("added time" , endtime-starttime);
            summedtime += endtime-starttime;
            
          }
        }else if(lastSessionData.data[j].type == "seek.forward"){
          console.log("seeked forward", (lastSessionData.data[j].to - lastSessionData.data[j].from));
          summedtime -= (lastSessionData.data[j].to - lastSessionData.data[j].from);
          //if there was a seekforward, the max time previously calculated previously is no longer valid and needs to be recalculated.
          maxWatchedTime = 0;
        }
        console.log("summedtime: ", summedtime);
				
				
}

```

We can log the math that happens as we iterate through the events:

```
summedtime:  0
start 0
summedtime:  0
stop 81
added time 81
summedtime:  81
start 81
summedtime:  81
seeked forward 76
summedtime:  5
stop 91
added time 10
summedtime:  15

```

Comparing these events - we can see that from the first start to the first pause is 81seconds, but then we encounter the seeked forward of 76 seconds - leading to a summed time of 5 seconds.  After the last 10 seconds are watched, we have a total of 15 seconds of the 91 second video watched.


## Playback totals

When watching required training videos, it is often mandatory that the time watched is logged and and recorded. With the api.video session data, we can track each user's viewing to know if they have completed a video, or if they must re-watch the video.

In a future post, we will combine this video watching algorithm with code to 'unlock' subsequent videos in a training series.

large_screenshot-2021-06-21-at-13-06-24.png

medium_screenshot-2021-06-21-at-13-06-24.png

small_screenshot-2021-06-21-at-13-06-24.png

thumbnail_screenshot-2021-06-21-at-13-06-24.png

screenshot-2021-06-21-at-13-06-24.png

Video event analysis using api.video sessions

Dynamic Metadata

When I read a book, I fold a corner over the page I am reading to remember my place.  Sometimes I fall asleep while reading, and it takes a few minutes to figure out where I had finished the night before, and I wish to myself that I had folded over the corner.

Watching video online is the same way - if you're interrupted while watching a long video (Amazon delivery at the door, child is hungry, cat needs to be let out... you know) it would be nice to resume right where you left off.

## Resuming videos

YouTube recently remembered where I had left off on a knitting tutorial.. that I had watched 3 years ago.  I have small children, so we often have to pause movies for days before we finish them, and it is great that Netflix recalls that we turned off the TV at 42:11 into the feature.  No more scanning and seeing potential spoilers a scene or two ahead.

We can do the same with api.video's videos.  We've released a demo at [resume.a.video](https://resume.a.video) where you can test this feature out.



## Resuming Videos with api.video

### Identifying users

For each video that you'd like to resume, you should create a [dynamic metadata](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/dynamic-metadata) attribute that you will use to identify each user. For the videos in the demo, I created a dynamic metadata with key "userName"

screenshot showing metadata setting for video

large_screenshot-2021-01-11-at-15-46-51.png

medium_screenshot-2021-01-11-at-15-46-51.png

small_screenshot-2021-01-11-at-15-46-51.png

thumbnail_screenshot-2021-01-11-at-15-46-51.png

screenshot-2021-01-11-at-15-46-51.png

>You can create a Dynamic metadata with the [Update video](https://docs.api.video/reference#patch-video) endpoint.  For the 'key' use the key.  For 'value' add two'_' before and after the term. The API will know that this value can have any potential value.

> You can also use the GUI at go.api.video to add the metadata.

We can use this to uniquely identify users who watch the video.  I would recommend using a unique non-identifiable string for each user, but for simplicity, I'll use first names in this demo. In this way, we can identify who is watching the video:

https://embed.api.video/vod/vi4fvaDG9nqfdMTqRnmZuvlJ?metadata[userName]=Doug

This video will record its session with the metadata userName: Doug.  

Awesome - assuming we know the user's name, we can insert this URL paramater and now identify all of their sessions with the video.


### Identifying user sessions

When you use the api.video player, each session has video analytics recorded (and each session is based on a cookie set in the browser). Using the [analytics video session](https://docs.api.video/reference#get_analytics-videos-videoid) endpoint, you can search each session for a video played.  You can limit this search with the metadata term. In NodeJS, this looks like:

```
var firstSessionQuery = {
			method: 'GET',
			url: 'https://ws.api.video/analytics/videos/'+videoId+'?currentPage=1&pageSize=1&metadata[userName]='+userName,
			headers: {
				accept: 'application/json',
				authorization: 'Bearer ' +authToken
			}
		}
		request(firstSessionQuery, function (error, response, body) {
			if (error) throw new Error(error);
			body = JSON.parse(body);
		}

```

The request url uses the videoId and userName to get just the sessions for the user.  The response can return from 1 to 100 results, with the most recent session appearing at the end. In this query, I only request the first session:

```
data {
  session: {
    sessionId: 'ps5qU6t436lzoDftbAfuJPzP',
    loadedAt: '2021-01-05T12:52:21+00:00',
    endedAt: '2021-01-05T12:52:53+00:00',
    metadata: [ [Object] ]
  },
  location: { country: 'United Kingdom', city: 'Watford' },
  referrer: {
    url: null,
    medium: 'unknown',
    source: 'unknown',
    searchTerm: 'unknown'
  },
  device: { type: 'computer', vendor: 'unknown', model: 'Other' },
  os: { name: 'Mac OS X', shortname: 'Mac OS X', version: '11.0.1' },
  client: { type: 'unknown', name: 'Chrome', version: '87.0.4280' }
}
pagination {
  currentPage: 1,
  currentPageItems: 1,
  pageSize: 1,
  pagesTotal: 23,
  itemsTotal: 23,
  links: [
    {
      rel: 'self',
      uri: '/analytics/videos/vi4fvaDG9nqfdMTqRnmZuvlJ?currentPage=1&pageSize=1&metadata%5BuserName%5D=Doug'
    },
    {
      rel: 'first',
      uri: '/analytics/videos/vi4fvaDG9nqfdMTqRnmZuvlJ?currentPage=1&pageSize=1&metadata%5BuserName%5D=Doug'
    },
    {
      rel: 'next',
      uri: '/analytics/videos/vi4fvaDG9nqfdMTqRnmZuvlJ?currentPage=2&pageSize=1&metadata%5BuserName%5D=Doug'
    },
    {
      rel: 'last',
      uri: '/analytics/videos/vi4fvaDG9nqfdMTqRnmZuvlJ?currentPage=23&pageSize=1&metadata%5BuserName%5D=Doug'
    }
  ]
}

```
 
Ok, so when I created this video in January 2021, I watched it, to ensure that it worked.  You can see my approximate location (it's really where my ISP exits to the internet), and I was on a Mac running Chrome.

So, why just one entry?  We want to get the last session that was viewed, and that is always the last session in the list.

```
var sessionCount = body.pagination.itemsTotal;
```

There are really only three possibilities to worry about here:

* sessionCount = 0.  This is a new viewer of the video, and there are no sessions saved.  If there are no sessions for the user - we can immediately serve the page, and start the video at the beginning:

```
				//no sessions for this user
				//return the video at time =0
				var videoUrl = 'https://embed.api.video/vod/'+videoId+'?metadata[userName]='+userName+'#autoplay';
				return res.render('video', {videoUrl});
```
This will load the page with the video autoplaying.

* sessionCount=1. The viewer has watched the video once.  If that is the case, the sessionId returned in the response will be the session we want.  You can now skip ahead to the "parsing session data" section.
* sessionCount >1.  There is more than one session for this user. In the example above, the itemsTotal parameter indicates that there are 23 sessions for userName=Doug.

The API has a limit of 100 sessions in the video analytics response. In general, one user is unlikely to have >100 sessions for a single video, so one query would probably be sufficient. However, this is a demo app with a default user - it is possible that we might exceed 100 sessions.  If I queried for 100 sessions, the demo would appear to fail - we'd only ever see the 100th session. So, we request one, and then to ensure that we always get the last session, we can now make a second query for the last session (conveniently in the pagination.links.last.uri).

```
var lastUri = decodeURI(body.pagination.links[linksLength-1].uri);
					console.log("number of sessions with this username:", lastSessionCounter);
					console.log("uri", lastUri);
					//request that last session
					var lastSessionQuery = {
						method: 'GET',
						url: 'https://ws.api.video' +lastUri,
						headers: {
							accept: 'application/json',
							authorization: 'Bearer ' +authToken
						}
					}
					request(lastSessionQuery, function (error, response, body) {
						if (error) throw new Error(error);
						body = JSON.parse(body);
						console.log("body", body);
						console.log(body.data[0]);
						var sessionId = body.data[0].session.sessionId;
						console.log(sessionId);
						//now we can access this sessionId, and get the last time in the session
						getSession(authToken, videoId, sessionId, userName);

```

This response now tells me the last session for Doug and this video:

```
 session: {
    sessionId: 'pshSgwO44hBbc0nYKz1OZsz',
    loadedAt: '2021-01-11T19:02:43+00:00',
    endedAt: '2021-01-12T11:35:49+00:00',
    metadata: [ [Object] ]
  },
  location: { country: 'United Kingdom', city: 'Slough' },
  referrer: {
    url: 'http://localhost:3006/',
    medium: 'unknown',
    source: 'unknown',
    searchTerm: 'unknown'
  },
  device: { type: 'computer', vendor: 'unknown', model: 'Other' },
  os: { name: 'Mac OS X', shortname: 'Mac OS X', version: '11.0.1' },
  client: { type: 'unknown', name: 'Chrome', version: '87.0.4280' }
}

```

Again - on my Mac - but this time, I am in Slough, UK (and I was testing this app locally on my computer).  The sessionId I want is 'pshSgwO44hBbc0nYKz1OZsz'

### Parsing session data

If there was a previous session for this user - we now have the last session (and more importantly the sessionId for that session). It may have just been one request - or it may have taken two.

I use the [session events](https://docs.api.video/reference#get_analytics-sessions-sessionid-events) endpoint to find out what happened in the session:

```
	function getSession (authToken, videoId, sessionId, userName) {
		//lets get 100 session activities - i doubt there will ever be that many - (or more than 100)
		var getSession = {
			method: 'GET',
			url: 'https://ws.api.video/analytics/sessions/'+sessionId+'/events?currentPage=1&pageSize=100',
			headers: {
				accept: 'application/json',
				authorization: 'Bearer ' +authToken
			}
		}
		request(getSession, function (error, response, body) {
			if (error) throw new Error(error);
			body = JSON.parse(body);
			console.log("sessions", body.data);
			var numberofEvents = body.data.length;
			console.log("num events", numberofEvents);
			var lastTimeRecorded = body.data[numberofEvents-1].at;
			console.log("last event time", lastTimeRecorded);
	
			var videoUrl = 'https://embed.api.video/vod/'+videoId+'?metadata[userName]='+userName+'#autoplay;t='+lastTimeRecorded;
					return res.render('video', {videoUrl});
	
		});
	
	}
	
	  
});

```

So the API calls the session endpoint with the sessionId we discovered in the last section.  We get a response (write to console log) and we extract how many events were in the last session, and find out what the last event was. 

>You'll note that in the comments I make an assumption that there will never be 100 events (play, pause, seek, etc.) in a single session. I think this is safe  to make :)

The session response looks like this:

```
sessions [
  { type: 'ready', emittedAt: '2021-01-12T11:59:42+00:00', at: 0 },
  { type: 'play', emittedAt: '2021-01-12T11:59:42+00:00', at: 0 },
  { type: 'pause', emittedAt: '2021-01-12T11:59:45+00:00', at: 2 },
  {
    type: 'seek.forward',
    emittedAt: '2021-01-12T11:59:46+00:00',
    from: 2,
    to: 163
  },
  { type: 'resume', emittedAt: '2021-01-12T11:59:47+00:00', at: 163 },
  { type: 'pause', emittedAt: '2021-01-12T11:59:49+00:00', at: 165 }
]
num events 6
last event time 165

```

So I started the video at time =0, and then at time t=2, I jumped ahead "seek.forward" to 163s.  Then I paused at 165s.

**So the last time viewed was at 165s.**

### Starting the video

We have now found all the sessions for the user.  We grabbed the last (most recent) session, and then found the last event in that session - to give us the last time that the user saw the video.

In HTML5, if you add #t=X, where X is an integer to the end of a video URL, the video playback will begin at that time. Simply returning the url with this parameter will start the video at the last time the user viewed the video.

## Summary

With Dynamic metadata, we are able to assign video watching sessions to specific customers.  We can then search a specific user's sessions for the most recent session, and inside that session, parse all the events that occured during playback. 

Using the last session, and the last event, we get the last time that the viewer interacted with the video.  We can now use this time as the "resume time" for the video, and stat the video at that time.

Don't forget to try it out: [resume.a.video](https://resume.a.video)

This is a nice feature that makes watching longer videos easier - your viewers know they can come back and quickly pick up where they left off.  

Are you thinking about using 'resume' in your videos?  The code is all up on [Github](https://github.com/dougsillars/resumeAVideo) Let us know - we'd love to see if it improves the engagement of your viewers! Leave us a comment in the [community](https://community.api.video) forum.

medium_screenshot-2021-01-11-at-13-29-09.jpg

small_screenshot-2021-01-11-at-13-29-09.jpg

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Resume a video

You have created the perfect video, uploaded it to api.video, and embedded the player on your website.  Are you curious about how many people are looking at your video?  How about where they are in the world?

Maybe you want to get even more granular, and know how much of the video is being watched?  Are they rewinding and watching parts again?  Are they skipping ahead?  With api.video’s analytics, you can find out.

In this post, we’ll take a look at how to extract this information for one video, and in future posts, we will go into deeper depth into building analysis tools.


## My Video





I’ve used this video of Tuba players playing the Beatles in other tutorial posts.  So, we know it will have a lot of views. But, how many?  Using the [List Video sessions](https://docs.api.video/reference/get_analytics-videos-videoid) endpoint, we can get information about each time this video was played with the api.video player.

To use this API, you need 2 items:  a ```videoId``` of the video you want to measure, and an authentication token.  In order to [authenticate your session](https://docs.api.video/reference/authentication), you need your api.video token.  Read the details in the [authentication tutorial](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/authentication-tutorial), and then come back with your token (it will be valid for one hour).

In this example, we’ll use curl to access the video session endpoint.  The videoId is ```vi4blUQJFrYWbaG44NChkH27```.  The curl request looks like:

```
curl --request GET \
  --url 'https://ws.api.video/analytics/videos/vi4blUQJFrYWbaG44NChkH27?currentPage=5&pageSize=100' --header 'authorization: Bearer {token}'   --header 'accept: application/vnd.api.video+json'
```

I am requesting page 5 (currentPage in the url), with pageSize=100 (100 sessions per page, since I knew that this video had between 400 and 500 views.  For simplicity, I’ll show just the 2 most recent sessions:

```json
{
	"data": [
		{
			"session": {
				"sessionId": "ps4mPLq8bZzjXlxwJG4cg4vl",
				"loadedAt": "2020-10-12T11:21:09+00:00",
				"endedAt": "2020-10-12T11:27:20+00:00"
			},
			"location": {
				"country": "United Kingdom",
				"city": "Glasgow"
			},
			"referrer": {
				"url": null,
				"medium": "unknown",
				"source": "unknown",
				"searchTerm": "unknown"
			},
			"device": {
				"type": "computer",
				"vendor": "unknown",
				"model": "Other"
			},
			"os": {
				"name": "Mac OS X",
				"shortname": "Mac OS X",
				"version": "10.15.6"
			},
			"client": {
				"type": "unknown",
				"name": "Chrome",
				"version": "85.0.4183"
			}
		},
		{
			"session": {
				"sessionId": "ps42gcSLNv8hSQxKOWWgxeNj",
				"loadedAt": "2020-10-12T11:43:56+00:00",
				"endedAt": "2020-10-12T11:44:19+00:00"
			},
			"location": {
				"country": "Netherlands",
				"city": "Uithoorn"
			},
			"referrer": {
				"url": "https://t.co",
				"medium": "social",
				"source": "Twitter",
				"searchTerm": "unknown"
			},
			"device": {
				"type": "computer",
				"vendor": "unknown",
				"model": "Other"
			},
			"os": {
				"name": "Mac OS X",
				"shortname": "Mac OS X",
				"version": "10.15.7"
			},
			"client": {
				"type": "unknown",
				"name": "Safari",
				"version": "14.0"
			}
		}
	],
	"pagination": {
		"currentPage": 5,
		"currentPageItems": 22,
		"pageSize": 100,
		"pagesTotal": 5,
		"itemsTotal": 422,
		"links": [
			{
				"rel": "self",
				"uri": "/analytics/videos/vi4blUQJFrYWbaG44NChkH27?currentPage=5&pageSize=100"
			},
			{
				"rel": "first",
				"uri": "/analytics/videos/vi4blUQJFrYWbaG44NChkH27?currentPage=1&pageSize=100"
			},
			{
				"rel": "previous",
				"uri": "/analytics/videos/vi4blUQJFrYWbaG44NChkH27?currentPage=4&pageSize=100"
			},
			{
				"rel": "last",
				"uri": "/analytics/videos/vi4blUQJFrYWbaG44NChkH27?currentPage=5&pageSize=100"
			}
		]
	}
}
```
Let’s start with the information at the bottom.  We can get links for each page of sessions, and itemsTotal is 422 - meaning there have been 422 sessions watching this video.  

Let’s look at the 2 sessions in the logs.  The first session has sessionId = ps4mPLq8bZzjXlxwJG4cg4vl.  This user watched the video for about 6 minutes based on the session length:
				"loadedAt": "2020-10-12T11:21:09+00:00",
				"endedAt": "2020-10-12T11:27:20+00:00"

We also know that they are in Glasgow, UK, using Chrome 85 on a Mac..  It just so happens that my ISP enters the internet in Scotland (all my advertising is Scotland based) even though my physical location is England, so this session is from my computer.

The 2nd session is interesting:

	"location": {
				"country": "Netherlands",
				"city": "Uithoorn"
			},
			"referrer": {
				"url": "https://t.co",
				"medium": "social",
				"source": "Twitter",
				"searchTerm": "unknown"
			},
			
I accidentally tweeted the url to this video, and deleted the tweet within 30 seconds,  Yet, someone on Twitter in the Netherlands still got to see the video before the tweet disappeared.

> Did you know that the api.video player works in Twitter?  Now you do! Your analytics will show video plays from any share on Twitter!

### Applications

With this data - you could build a map of where the video is being watched by country, and in some cases by city (with the caeat that this is not 100% accurate - my ISP says I am in Scotland).  You can also understand the referring urls: Twitter, blogs, Linkedin, etc.  Finally, you can also monitor the traffic patterns by day of week, time of day, etc.


## Going even deeper 

It is great to know that there was a video view at 11:21 GMT - but we can learn even more about this video view.  Using the [session events](https://docs.api.video/reference/analytics#get_analytics-sessions-sessionid-events) endpoint and the sessionId, we can actually describe the exact usage of that session.  Making a request using a sessionId (note this is a different - more interesting - session):

 ```
--request GET \
   --url 'https://ws.api.video/analytics/sessions/ps42gcSLNv8hSQxKOWWgxeNj/events?currentPage=1&pageSize=100' --header 'accept: application/vnd.api.video+json' --header 'authorization: Bearer {token}'  --header 'accept: application/vnd.api.video+json'
```

This request will return all of the video player events in that session: so we can see any play, pause or seek events that occurred in playback:

```json
{
	"data": [
		{
			"type": "ready",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:43:32+00:00",
			"at": 0
		},
		{
			"type": "play",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:43:32+00:00",
			"at": 0
		},
		{
			"type": "pause",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:43:57+00:00",
			"at": 2
		},
		{
			"type": "resume",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:44:00+00:00",
			"at": 18
		},
		{
			"type": "seek.forward",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:44:00+00:00",
			"from": 2,
			"to": 18
		},
		{
			"type": "pause",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:44:01+00:00",
			"at": 19
		},
		{
			"type": "resume",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:44:04+00:00",
			"at": 2
		},
		{
			"type": "seek.backward",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:44:04+00:00",
			"from": 19,
			"to": 2
		},
		{
			"type": "pause",
			"emittedAt": "2020-10-11T20:44:11+00:00",
			"at": 9
		}
	],
	"pagination": {
		"currentPage": 1,
		"currentPageItems": 9,
		"pageSize": 100,
		"pagesTotal": 1,
		"itemsTotal": 9,
		"links": [
			{
				"rel": "self",
				"uri": "/analytics/sessions/psyd0zH6RWUCxP7xnWqcnKm/events?currentPage=1&pageSize=100"
			},
			{
				"rel": "first",
				"uri": "/analytics/sessions/psyd0zH6RWUCxP7xnWqcnKm/events?currentPage=1&pageSize=100"
			},
			{
				"rel": "last",
				"uri": "/analytics/sessions/psyd0zH6RWUCxP7xnWqcnKm/events?currentPage=1&pageSize=100"
			}
		]
	}
}
```

The video was ready to play (entry 0) and started to play (entry 1) at ```2020-10-11T20:43:32+00:00```.  (That is expected, as the [player](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/tutorial-video-player-customisation) associated with this video is set to autoplay as soon as it is ready). The video is also set to loop, which is evident in the next entry.

The third entry shows that the video was paused at ```2020-10-11T20:43:57+00:00```.  The video timestamp shows “2” meaning 2 seconds into the video.  About 25 seconds elapsed since the video started, so how does that work?  The video is about 20 seconds long, meaning that the video played to the end and started again before the pause occurred.  

The next entries show that there is a seek.forward event from 2->18s, and the video resumed for one second before rewinding back to 2 and then playing to 9 seconds into the video.

Aggregating these session stats across all sessions can give you an idea of when users rewind - perhaps when an important point is raised  - indicating that in future videos that data should be highlighted for your users.  You can also see if there is early abandonment, or jumps ahead - as users look for the content that they are interested in.

### Fast analytics

These results are available as soon as the session is completed.  To see how quickly, I recorded a video where I watched the video, and then retrieved the analytics immediately afterward.  




## Conclusion

When you use the api.video player, there are a number of interesting analytics collected. Beyond knowing the number of views, the geo-location of the views and the time that the videos were viewed, you can also dig into the analytics of each session to better understand how your videos are being played.  If you have questions, please reach out in the [community forum](https://community.api.video)


medium_abacus6.jpg

small_abacus6.jpg

thumbnail_abacus6.jpg

abacus6.jpg

Video analytics: A primer

In the classic movie *Field of Dreams*, a mysterious voice whispers to Kevin Costner “if you build it, they will come.”  


<video autoplay muted loop>
		<source src="https://media.giphy.com/media/gZuxOq7zSL5DO/giphy.mp4">
</video><br/><br/>


His belief of this statement completely transformed his life and drove him to build a baseball stadium in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa… and they came…<br/>


<video autoplay muted loop>
		<source src="https://media.giphy.com/media/z3WMjg3hu3ce4/giphy.mp4">
</video><br/><br/>


## If you Stream it...

You've created some awesome videos, and uploaded them to api.video.  Great work - it looks awesome.  

Here is a video that we posted in our blog post announcing our new video player:

<iframe src="https://embed.api.video/vod/viTLpKB231ATWOWjkHgi9bf#autoplay#loop" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<br/><br/>

## ...Who will come?

Eventually you want to know, how many people came to see my video?  What can I learn about them? Enter api.video’s powerful [video analytics](https://docs.api.video/reference/analytics) API. Using the API, we can transfer all of the view data form our videos into our favourite database, and learn about the viewers of our videos.

Let’s start with grabbing the viewing details for a video. In this case, I’ll use this Planets video that my daughter recorded for her class on astronomy:

<iframe src="https://embed.api.video/vod/vi16NDdXmGxk5QSggW54qw0v#autoplay#loop"  frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

The url for this video is: https://embed.api.video/vod/vi16NDdXmGxk5QSggW54qw0v

First I must [authenticate](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/authentication-tutorial) myself at API.video, and I receive an access token that is good for an hour.

With the token, I can use the videoId to request all of the view information about my video with the [analytics API](https://docs.api.video/reference/analytics).  The videoId for the video is the value at the end of the url (vi16NDdXmGxk5QSggW54qw0v):




In this case, I am requesting 25 results per page, and page one of the data.  That’s actually fine, since I know there are only 19 views on this video.  

The JSON result is pretty long, but here is what one entry looks like:


To me, this is super cool.  A person in Vietnam, using Firefox on Ubuntu, watched this video in June!  And there are 18 more of these to look at and to parse.

### Demo

We have created a demo that takes a videoId and counts the country, device and browser for each view, and places the results on a page. You can try it out at [whoswatched.a.video](https://whoswatched.a.video).

In order to look at the data, I am going to suck the JSON file into Couchbase - a database that uses JSON to create a "table" format similar to SQL. This will allow me to run queries on the JSON much like one would run a database query.

### Creating a database in Couchbase:

Download and install [Couchbase](https://www.couchbase.com/) on your computer.  When the install is complete, you’ll have an admin dashboard open in your browser (on my Mac it is running on localhost:8901).  We’d like to add in our api.video JSON file into a data bucket.  To create the bucket - navigate to the Bucket section and click the "ADD BUCKET" button. I have the memory set at the minimum 100 MB (there are all of 19 entries after all!).


large_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-01-16.png

medium_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-01-16.png

small_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-01-16.png

thumbnail_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-01-16.png

screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-01-16.png

Great - now we have our data bucket added.  Now we’ll want to import the JSON from api.video, so we can do our analysis.  This is done in the terminal using the ```cbimport``` command:

My username is Administrator with password 123456 (Google Chrome is mighty peeved about my use of an insecure password on localhost), adding a json file into the videoStats bucket.  Each video view has a sessionId, so I use that as a unique key.

I get a success message in my terminal, and looking back at the Couchbase admin panel under Documents, I can see each entry from the JSON has been added:


medium_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-12-54.jpg

small_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-12-54.jpg

thumbnail_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-12-54.jpg

screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-12-54.jpg

Now we must index the data. In the Query Editor, enter:

Now we can do data analysis of our video views. For example, to understand the number of views per country:

small_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-14-20.png

thumbnail_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-14-20.png

screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-14-20.png

That’s pretty cool!  


## Live Stream Analytics

We can do exactly the same thing with live stream analytics. Note: these only show “views” of a live stream.  If you run a live stream and no one watches - there will be no analytics reported.  Further - if your live streams are saved as video on demand (VOD) for later use - any VOD analytics are saved with the newly created VOD video, and will have no connection to the original live stream.

Let’s look at a live stream that has a number of views.  On the [api.video](https://api.video) homepage, we have a demo that allows you to livestream right from the homepage.  The live streamer then “watches” their stream in the browser at the same time that they are broadcasting - guaranteeing that every live stream gets at least one viewer (in the same location as the live streamer!)

The API call is similar to that of the VOD request, I just use the 'live-streams' endpoint as opposed to the 'videos' endpoint I used above.

### GeoLocation  


The live stream demo is hosted in North America and in Europe, and we use geolocation to direct our users to the correct server. Let’s see how well our load balancers are doing. Traffic directed to North America is on the left, and European traffic is on the right:


large_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-16-21.png

medium_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-16-21.png

small_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-16-21.png

thumbnail_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-16-21.png

screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-16-21.png

It looks like our load balancing is doing a bang up job. :)


Combining the two sets of data (I just created a new bucket with all the data added) allows us to see that api.video’s home page has been live streaming all around the world:


Couchbase results in Google Sheets to create this chart.

medium_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-17-03.jpg

small_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-17-03.jpg

thumbnail_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-17-03.jpg

screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-17-03.jpg

### Devices & browsers

Most of the streams are from desktop machines. All 28 phone instances correspond directly to 28 Android devices.(This is due to a limitation in Safari that prevents the demo from working on any iOS device.)  Of our Android users, we see 25 using Chrome, 1 Samsung Internet, 1 Opera (and one hidden variant.)

Desktop users are mostly Windows and Mac (and pretty evenly distributed), but also a good number on Linux/Ubuntu).


small_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-33-04.png

thumbnail_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-33-04.png

screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-33-04.png

thumbnail_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-33-10.png

screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-33-10.png

thumbnail_screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-33-15.png

screenshot-2020-08-13-at-13-33-15.png

## Conclusion


The video analytics offered by api.video allow you to better understand who is consuming your content. In this post, we've walked through the steps to extract the data using the Analytics API in JSON format, and then ingested the data into a database for fast and easy queries.  

We used this data to see how the live stream demo on the api.video home page was used in July 2020.

How are you using api.video's analytics? Drop us a note in the [community forum](https://community.api.video) with your use cases!

Analytics with api.video

Featured article

# api.video blog

Blog

Follow the api.video Blog to explore tutorials, video use cases, and learn about on-demand and live-streaming video updates.