Announcements

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Alexandre Willot

Product updates

## 1. What do domain referrer restrictions do?

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With Domain Referrer Restrictions, you can now specify which domains or subdomains are allowed to stream your videos or live streams. This means that even if someone gets a hold of your API credentials, or video and live stream links, they won't be able to use them to watch stream your content from an unauthorized domain.

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## 2. How it works

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1. Log in to your [api.video account](https://dashboard.api.video) and navigate to the [domains](https://dashboard.api.video/domains) sections.
2. Click on "Set your allowed domains"

    

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3. In the conversation popup, input the domains or subdomains you want to allow.
4. Our customer care team will evaluate your request and provide you access as soon as possible 
5. You are all set! Your videos will only play from the list of domains you have listed.  

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## 3. Availability

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As an api.video customer, you can create your own list of allowed domains, at no additional cost. 

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## 4. Documentation

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Depending on your use case, you might need more explanations, you can explore our domain referrer validation docs [here](https://docs.api.video/docs/domain-referrer)

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### Q&A

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**What are the other ways to secure your videos?**
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Domain Referrer Restrictions is just one of the many privacy and security features that api.video offers to help you protect your videos and streams. We take security seriously and are constantly working to improve our platform. 

For instance, our infrastructure provides safe, replicated video storage.

Also, in addition to domain restrictions, [api.video](http://api.video) offers multiple solutions to secure your online videos:

1. [Private videos](https://docs.api.video/docs/private-videos) will allow you to secure videos individually, you can select which videos are private and which are public. This is a very powerful feature that will help you control and manage access to video in a granular way. Get started with Private Videos [here](https://docs.api.video/docs/video-access-management-getting-started-with-private-videos).
2. The [custom domain](https://dashboard.api.video/domains) feature lets you white-label the video experience you offer to your users, and also bypass firewalls that are configured to display content only from a finite list of approved domains. 
3. [api.video](http://api.video) offers a [video watermark functionality](https://docs.api.video/reference/watermarks). It allows you to embed any watermark you want into your video to protect your content. For example, it is useful to apply watermarks if you are streaming copyrighted videos. 
4. Last but not least, if you use api.video’s player, you can also add your own [player themes](https://docs.api.video/reference/player-themes). Among the options, you can [add your own brand logo](https://docs.api.video/reference/post_players-playerid-logo) on top of your player. While the video watermark gets burnt onto the video, this player feature only creates a front-end overlay on top of your video.

If you have any questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team, at hello@api.video. Now time to set up your own playback restrictions based on your domains 😀
And if you don't have an api.video account yet but want to test the product, remember that api.video offers a [free signup option](https://dashboard.api.video/register), where you can test all of the product features.
Happy video day!

Introducing Playback Restrictions with Domain Referrer Validation

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Introducing playback restrictions with Domain Referrer validation

Introducing Custom Domains — a feature that lets you stream videos or live streams from your own domain (such as `videos.yourdomain.com/` or `livestreams.yourdomain.com/`).

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Why use Custom Domains? Because it lets you brand your video URL, comply with network security, and increase your SEO ranking. Let’s look at its benefits in detail, pricing, and explain how you can start using your own domains.

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## Benefits of Custom Domain

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### 1. Branded Experience

With Custom Domains, you can create a fully branded URL for your viewers. This means that when your audience watches or shares videos or live streams, they will only see URLs with your domain. They will never know you are relying on api.video to actually serve these videos.

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### 2. Compliance with Network Security Requirements

Using a custom domain can help you comply with network security requirements. 

If you have a firewall in your organization, Custom Domains helps meet the firewall requirements. This ensures that your videos are viewed without any issues, and you can maintain the security of your network. 

For example, if you are working in a university or public institution, there are probably network restrictions that could prevent [api.video](http://api.video) content to be played, and that is when you will need a custom domain.

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### 3. SEO Boost

Improving search engine traffic and viewer confidence with brand-relevant URLs is another key benefit of using Custom Domains. By using your own domain name, you can create a more memorable and recognizable URL that is relevant to your brand. This can help improve your search engine ranking and attract more viewers to your videos.

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## How it works

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Without custom domains, your users will see URLs such as 

`https://live.api.video/{livestreamid}` or `https://vod.api.video/{videoid}`

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With a custom domain set, your users will see your own URL. Depending on how you set it up, it could look like anything! Here are 2 examples for your inspiration:

`https://videos.yourdomain.com/{videoid}` or `https://livestreams.yourdomain.com/{livestreamid}`

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## How to enable Custom Domains for your account 
### 1. Reaching out to api.video

The starting price of Custom Domains is $60/month. 

Here are different ways you can request access to Custom Domains on your account:

- From the [dashboard](https://dashboard.api.video)
- From the docs: [Custom Domains page](https://docs.api.video/docs/using-custom-domains)
- Alternatively, you can simply [contact](https://www.notion.so/Introducing-Custom-Domains-bf6fdcfdb4e24d4d9827b9d7fac17385) our support team via email (hello@api.video) or by reaching out on api.video’s chat.

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### 2. Setting up your custom domain (Optional read 😀)

As explained in step 1. above, setting up you own domains is a manual process. It requires an exchange of information between you and our customer care team. 
Still, if you are curious to know how this works, we will explain it below.

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**2.1 Updating DNS records**

You need to update your custom domain’s DNS records. Simply add a `CNAME` for every custom domain that you want to use. Each custom URL should point to api.video’s corresponding CDN.

- `video.mycustomdomain.com CNAME` → `vod.api.video`
- `live.mycustomdomain.com CNAME` → `live.api.video`
- `embed.mycustomdomain.com CNAME` → `embed.api.video`
- `collector.mycustomdomain.com CNAME` → `collector.api.video`

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> The steps to update your custom domain’s DNS records are determined by the domain host that you use. Contact your domain host if you are unsure about the specific steps of updating the DNS records.
> 

Depending on your use case, you might need separate domains for `video`, `live`,  `collector`, and `embed` services. This should be done for **every custom domain** that you want to use.

| Your use case | Custom domains needed |
| --- | --- |
| Live streaming | video.mycustomdomain.com, live.mycustomdomain.com, embed.mycustomdomain.com, collector.mycustomdomain.com |
| VOD and Live streaming | video.mycustomdomain.com, live.mycustomdomain.com, embed.mycustomdomain.com,collector.mycustomdomain.com |
| VOD only | video.mycustomdomain.com , embed.mycustomdomain.com,collector.mycustomdomain.com |
| VOD using your own custom player | video.mycustomdomain.com |

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**2.2 Providing TLS certificates**

api.video requires a valid TLS certificate for every custom domain that you want to use.

Simply upload the certificates for every custom domain through the dedicated support channel.

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**2.3 Start using your new video or live domain**

After you have configured your DNS records and provided the corresponding TLS certificates, api.video enables traffic for each custom domain that you want to use.

This process usually takes a few hours. If you have any questions, reach out to us!

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## Conclusion

In this article, we have described how custom domains can be helpful to your business (branding, SEO, avoiding network restrictions) and how you can easily set your own custom domains with api.video. We hope the content was clear. Now, try setting up your own domains 😄
And if you don't have an api.video account yet but want to test the product, remember that api.video offers a [free signup option](https://dashboard.api.video/register), where you can test all of the product features.
Happy video day!

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### FAQs

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**On which domains can I apply custom domains?**

Depending on your use case, your customers will see these URLs when you deliver videos or live streams to them.

`video.mycustomdomain.com`,`vod.mycustomdomain.com`,`embed.mycustomdomain.com`,`collector.mycustomdomain.com`

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**What is the exact cost of custom domains?**

It depends on your use case. 

- If you use [api.video](http://api.video) only for video or live streaming, the price will be $60/month.
- If you use api.video for both video and live streaming, the price is $100/month.

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**How often do I need to update my TLS certificates?**

Each TLS certificate has an expiry date. Since you manage these certificates, [api.video](http://api.video) will not be able to alert you when they expire. To ensure uninterrupted service, make sure that you always renew your TLS certificates and provide them to api.video before they expire.

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Introducing Custom Domains for api.video

API client

Private Videos

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Artem Matinian

NodeJS

The internet is fascinating; vast information zooms through back and forth, enabling millions of people worldwide to share their knowledge and experiences. However, it’s also a place where one must be cautious and protect oneself regarding private content and limit access to personal information, especially videos. We understand that it’s a sensitive topic for many it's difficult to implement on your own, so we created Private Videos.

## Secure & manage access to your videos

Maybe you are asking yourself: “ok, but how does *video privacy setting* help me?”. There are quite a few use cases for private videos, and we’ve discussed the hassle of securing the videos yourself. 

- On-demand videos behind a paywall
- Content Protection
- Video NFTs
- Video for internal use only
- Private video messaging
- Disposable one-time videos

And pretty much any video where you want to limit or restrict access! 🔒

### What are private videos

A private video is a video object secured by a private token and can be consumed only once. After the private token is consumed, the video is only available once you have another private token assigned to it. So, even if your user has the video URL, sharing it with anyone else is useless. 

We tried to make it as simple as possible to secure your videos:

- Create a video container with a `public: false` flag, which will make the video (surprise 🥳) private!
- Private videos will generate a new private token each time a request is made for that video id.
- Each private token is usable only once.

If you like to get into nitty gritty details, feel free to check out our docs about [Private Videos](https://docs.api.video/docs/private-videos).

### How to deliver private videos to your audience

After you learn how private video works and what it’s good for, we can now talk about the delivery part, which is the most important part. 

To reiterate the private video concept, here’s a visual representation of how the whole thing works:

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Knowing that now we can finally start building stuff! 

It’s that simple! (if you want the advanced stuff, scroll down to “Time to roll up our sleeves!”)

Let’s try to deliver one video in HTML with our own (amazing!) [api.video](http://api.video) player. 

Suppose you already have a cool video uploaded. Go to the dashboard and get make the video private (if it’s not already private)

Now that the video is private, we can deliver it to users. Here’s a quick snippet in HTML that you can use to play your video in the browser. Just copy the code snippet and replace the URL with your private video URL. You can find the video URLs in the Assets section of the Video Details:

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We played the video once with a browser. Now, open another browser tab in incognito mode and play the same video. You can see that it’s gone! no more video! don’t worry; even though the video still exists, the token changes once you consume it. If you refresh the video details page, you’ll notice that the private token has changed. If you paste the URL with the new private token in the `src` you will be able to play the video again in a new tab, but already with a different private token. Cool right? 🙂

### Let’s get programmable

The concept works the same for API requests. You can request the API and fetch the video by id; if it’s a private video the response will give you the URLs with the private tokens (the `XYZ` in the URLs stands for the private token):

test video

### Assets? what assets? 🏠

Notice that JSON above has a field called `assets`. We’ll refer to assets later, but it’s important to know what they are. Assets include the URLs for the video thumbnail, iframe with the [api.video](http://api.video) player for embedding directly into the HTML, and several other video formats like `mp4` and `hls`. Now you know! 💡

### How to create a sample app with private videos

Now that we know the privacy setting concepts, it’s time to write some example apps that will give us a small glimpse into what powerful tool we are dealing with here.  

Let’s assume that we want to build an app that will display all the private video thumbnails on our website and make them clickable so it will open a video once it’s clicked. Something like that:

On the backend, we will have to do some magic. While with public videos it’s pretty simple as just returning the videos, for private videos we will need to get the session first. Let’s look at the HTML code:

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Notice the `avh` parameter in the query string? The `avh` parameter is where you will pass the session token... oh wait, what's a session token?!

### Session token & session management

Session Tokens are designed to retain the same session for a user. Let’s take an example - a user opened a tab with the private video and would like to refresh the tab, or the video didn’t work with our player for whatever reason. Hence, you redirect the user to an mp4 version of that video (different asset). For these cases, we’ve created the session tokens.

There are two types of tokens for private videos:

- **Private token** (which we already discussed): generated every time you pull a private video from the API.
- **Session token**: This token is used to retain the private video session with the same private token.

At a very high level, to request different assets for the same private video, more than having the private token is required; you also need to retain the session. For that, we have the session token. In the flowchart below, you can see that for each private video, we are using a session token + the private token:

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So let’s get a bit technical here. To start the session, you will need to request the `/session` endpoint, get the session token, add it to the first asset you request, and then add it to every following asset you request. In the example above, we will request the `/session` endpoint, then add the session token to the query string of the private video thumbnail → request an embedded video asset with the session token in the query string → request a private video asset in mp4 format with the session token, and so on, you got the idea 😄

In other words:

Get the session token:
`GET https://vod.api.video/vod/{videoId}/token/{private token}/session`

Response:
`{"session_token": "111-222-333"}`

Now we can request the private video thumbnail asset → embedded video → mp4:

`GET https://vod.api.video/vod/{video id}/token/{private token}/thumbnail.jpg?avh={session token}`

`GET https://embed.api.video/vod/{video id}?token={private token}&avh={session token}`

`GET https://vod.api.video/vod/{video id}/token/{private token}/mp4/source.mp4?avh={session token}`

Sample runnable code of the above app in Node.js:

Let’s do a step-by-step review of what we are doing here.

1. We are creating a server that will serve HTML on port 3000 with Node.js
2. To make it easy on ourselves, we create a wrapper that will make an HTTP request to [api.video](http://api.video) with api key already embedded in HTTP header. That’s the `apiVideoReq` function.
3. We will get a raw response from the apiVideoReq, so need to create a parser that will parse the JSON response if the request is successful (200). That’s going to be the `getJsonResponse` 
4. Then we need to create a function that will get the list of our videos. That’s pretty simple with the wrapper function we have, so let’s reuse the `apiVideoReq` and make a request to `[https://ws.api.video/videos](https://ws.api.video/videos)` endpoint. You can find more info about the `/videos` endpoint [here](https://docs.api.video/reference/list-videos).
The response we'll get is an array of objects of the following format:

Notice that the second object has a property `public` which is set to `false` , which means that the video is private; hence we need to get all of these videos. 

1. Extract all the private videos from the list by creating an iterator that will run through the array of objects and get each video with the flag `public` set to `false` pushing only the assets and video id into a new array.
2. If you remember, we need to get the session token by requesting the /session endpoint. The endpoint accepts the video id and private token; however, if you notice the private token is only in the URL. So let’s extract it! we can use this simple regex to extract it from the embedded URL `(?<=token=).*$` 
3. We first extract the private token from the URL and map it to the asset objects (with the video URL, video id, etc.) 
4. Then we request the /session endpoint passing in the video id and private token, and we get the session_token. Now we can also map to the same asset object.
5. We’re almost done; hang in there! now let’s get generate `<img>` tags with the src as the asset thumbnails and add the session token in the query string as an `avh` parameter, i.e: `<img src=https://vod.api.video/vod/AABBCC/token/c77d7bf3-4e2f-4a85-9e15-5c35992c11fc/thumbnail.jpg?avh={{session token}}>` .  Then in the same line generate the <a href> tag that will lead us to the actual video, and as you understood already, it too has to include the session token, i.e: `<a href=https://embed.api.video/vod/AABBCC?token=c77d7bf3-4e2f-4a85-9e15-5c35992c11fc&avh={{session token}}>`
6. And lastly, generate the HTML `<head>` and `<body>` while encapsulating the `<a href><img></a>` we’ve already created, and…. DONE!

Now you have clickable thumbnails of your private videos which you can secure behind user credentials for example 🙂

Let’s summarize what we’ve learned here:

- We’ve understood how private videos work and the purpose of private videos with real-life use cases.
- We’ve also built a small app to leverage private videos to create clickable thumbnails with minimal code.

If you have any questions or feedback about this article, do not hesitate to contact our support. You can also find the docs for private videos [here](https://docs.api.video/docs/private-videos).

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Video Access Management: How to create, deliver, and manage private videos and what are they anyway?

api video plugin

video api

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Neda Ashrafi Amiri

If you have some technical knowledge, you know it’s not the wisest decision to create and develop your product from scratch. Why reinvent the wheel? To successfully create an application or a website, you need to take advantage of what is already out there and add that extra bit to make your product unique and competitive 🏃🏾‍♀️🏃‍

Each tech company can only provide you with some of your needs. While WordPress is ideal for developing your company website, WooCommerce is an excellent tool for adding a webshop, and api.video is specialized for managing your videos on your site. This means that you depend on various suppliers for tools and apps to create an end product 📲 

api.video has made it its mission to create a strong network of plugins, clients, libraries, and other no-code or low-code tools, namely api.video's ecosystem. We know what our strengths are, and at the same time, we acknowledge the power of our peers. We work towards making it easy to add api.video to your product and combine it with the rest of the tools you need to create your solution.

Over the past year, api.video’s ecosystem has had a staggering growth to ensure that you can easily add, manage, and playback videos into your products anywhere on the web and mobile. In this article, we will look at some of the most popular items in our ecosystem and how they can help you create your solution, whether it's an application or a website 💻

## api.video’s ecosystem - the highlights 🏆

Let’s look at some of our most recent and popular additions to our ecosystem and find out how you can benefit from each tool.

🧩  [Video import tool](https://import.api.video/)

Some of you were looking to move away from your current video providers and switch to api.video services for various reasons such as gaining more control over your video content and benefiting from the flexible pricing plans that we offer. We saw this as a great opportunity to introduce an ultimate video import tool that allows you to quickly and easily import your videos from another provider (e.g. Dropbox or Vimeo) to your api.video dashboard.

🧩  [Plugin for WordPress](https://api.video/blog/product-updates/wordpress-plugin)

WordPress is the world’s most popular Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to create your blog or website without bothering with too much development. A large number of WordPress users were looking for a video provider with more security and higher availability rates than some of the more commercial video providers out there such as YouTube. Becoming aware of this gap in the market, we developed a plugin to offer api.video services for WordPress users.

With our WordPress plugin, you can embed and manage your videos into your WordPress website or blog using our HTML5 video player and manage your videos from your WordPress admin interface.

🧩  [Plugin for Strapi](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/api-video-strapi-plugin-add-videos-to-your-headless-cms)

If you are looking for a CMS that gives you freedom and doesn’t lock you in any way, then Strapi headless CMS is your ticket out! Strapi is one of the most popular headless CMSs out there that saves you a lot of development time while enabling you to use your favorite tools to bring content to your website and application.

api.video created a powerful plugin that is a perfect fit for you who wish to add videos to your content but also have the possibility to customize and manage your videos as you wish.

**🧩  [Player](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/api-video-player-for-flutter-playback-videos-on-your-apps) and [uploader](https://github.com/apivideo/api.video-flutter-uploader) for Flutter

Android, iOS, and web, all require a certain way of development with different coding languages. This is where Flutter comes and makes your lives as developers easier. No more developing multiple applications and websites with hours and hours of coding. With Flutter, you create once and generate for multiple devices. Here is where api.video comes to complete your application development journey.

We built an api.video customizable player for Flutter built natively for Android, iOS, and the web. We also created an uploader that allows you to upload your videos to [api.video](http://api.video/) from your Flutter application. These are very specific needs that go a long way to making your development journey smoother.

🧩  Players for [Android](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-add-an-api-video-player-to-your-android-application) and [iOS](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-add-an-api-video-swift-player-to-your-ios-application) applications

Are you creating an Android or iOS application and want to add videos? api.video has developed players that help you with just that. A hassle-free and quick way to add your videos but also have the options to adjust to screen size and customise your players as you want.

🧩  [Accessible player](https://api.video/player/)

We work everyday to remove any technological barriers so that any group of society can easily use api.video’s services. Whether a person experiences vision impairments or hearing impairments, it’s our ultimate mission to make api.video accessible for all users. We made sure to develop our video player including ARIA attributes so that it’s accessible to all screen reader users.

We have many more interesting and useful tools in our ecosystem. Go and browse through our [ecosystem catalog](https://dashboard.api.video/catalog), [blog](https://api.video/blog/), and [GitHub](https://github.com/apivideo) page to find out the many more opportunities that are available when it comes to building your solution!

## api.video’s ecosystem- tutorials, use-cases, and support 🔦

When it comes to creating a strong and powerful ecosystem, many companies often forget the very important part of this journey which is the pedagogical part. At api.video we don’t just push the latest trendy plugins on our ecosystem; we also ensure that we provide the right tutorials, use-cases, and customer support that goes with our new tools. It’s an intuitive web of elements that make our ecosystem catalog unique and stands out from our competitors.

### Tutorials ✍️

Whenever we launch a new item on our ecosystem catalog, our team plans a tutorial that helps our users to navigate the new tool. Our tutorials can range from being a simple step-by-step guide to a quick video demo that display how to use and explore our new tool.

Here are three of the latest examples:

1. [Switch to api.video with our fast & easy video import tool](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/switch-to-api-video-with-our-fast-easy-video-import-tool)
2. [api.video Strapi Plugin: Add videos to your headless CMS](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/api-video-strapi-plugin-add-videos-to-your-headless-cms)
3. [api.video player for Flutter: playback videos on your apps](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/api-video-player-for-flutter-playback-videos-on-your-apps)

You can find many more tutorials on our [blog](https://api.video/blog/).

### Use-cases 💡

You may have the will to create the next best application but not quite know what you can create with our tools! We provide use-case-based articles to give you plenty of ideas that can inspire you and bring your creativity to life! 

You want to create your own TikTok or Loom-like app? Browse through some of the articles that we have written with real-life implementations that our ecosystem team has put together:

- **[Build a YouTube-like site with no code](https://api.video/blog/no-code/bubble-io-api-video-build-a-youtube-like-site-with-no-code)**
- **[Build your own TikTok](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/rebuilding-tiktok-with-api-video)**
- **[Create a Udemy-like learning platform](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-create-a-udemy-like-learning-platform)**
- **[Build a Loom-like app with just a few lines of code](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/build-a-loom-like-app-with-just-a-few-lines-of-code)**
- **[How to Be Like Netflix with the Power of api.video Analytics](https://api.video/blog/video-trends/how-to-be-like-netflix-with-the-power-of-api-video-analytics)**

We have many more articles that can inspire you. Check out our [blog](https://api.video/blog/), and feel free to [contact us](https://api.video/contact) if you have any feedback or other ideas that you would like to explore!

### Documentation 📚

Developers love a neat documentation that helps them navigate through code libraries. We work towards refining our documentation everyday to make your lives easier. Check out our [documentation](https://docs.api.video/docs/apivideo-api-reference) page and our [GitHub](https://github.com/apivideo) pages for more information!

### Support 🤝

It doesn’t end with a new tool, a tutorial, or a use-case article. We know that every one of you may have a very specific and individual need that requires our one-on-one attention. Therefore we ensure that our experts are available to answer your questions or hear your feedback anytime. Chat with us or [email us](https://api.video/contact) whenever it suits you! We are located in EU-zone to answer all your requirements!

## What is next for the api.video’s ecosystem 🧗🏼‍♂️

We are currently working on a few exciting projects to expand our ecosystem catalog! Here is a sneak peak of the closest upcoming projects **👀**

- new providers in the import tool
- brand new open source HTML5 player
- new plugins & integrations in CMS & no code platforms
- continue to improve & to add features to our existing SDKs
- a new Firebase plugin to help mobile app developers to easily build UGC apps

We work towards developing tools that make it easier for you to upload, manage, and smoothly playback your videos in small or large quantities on your websites and applications. 

🚀 [Get started](https://dashboard.api.video/register) for free at api.video and follow us on our growth journey 💫

api video ecosystem plugins no-code tools

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Our ecosystem: connect api.video with your product 🔌

Video stream

2022 is coming to an end, but for us, it’s just the beginning of a new era 🦋

It has been a year full of innovations and growth for the api.video team. We did everything to make video streaming simpler and easier than ever before! Adding videos to your products is our mission and our everyday mantra 🧘‍♀️

In this article, we would like to celebrate 🎉 and look back on some of the major highlights of 2022 together 🥂 

## **All-in-one infrastructure 🎈**

We built an infrastructure that is strong and independent. api.video offers an all-in-one dedicated encoding machines and CDN setup. We have observed 100% availability of our services this year, with no downtimes. What does this mean for you? We ensure that you have stability and control over all your videos. We also monitor and track important data to improve performance and provide a flawless playback experience for your viewers.

## **Ecosystem designed for you** 🔌

You 🫵 yes you. You were our main focus this year! And you will always be our main focus. Whether you are a content enthusiast looking to add videos to your Content Management System (CMS), or a developer wanting to skip the hassles of developing applications for multiple operating systems, we created the right tools for you.

We have a growing ecosystem with many new plugins, clients, libraries, and other no-code tools. Now you can easily add videos to your favorite applications with just a few clicks!

Here is a list of some of the tools we designed for you this year 🧩

- [Plugin for WordPress](https://api.video/blog/product-updates/wordpress-plugin)  - A plugin to embed and manage your videos into your WordPress website or blog.
- [iOS client](https://api.video/blog/product-updates/new-ios-api-client) - A client that removes the iOS SDK to simplify api.video usage and deployment with advanced upload features.
- [React upload button](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-upload-a-video-with-react-and-nodejs) - a fully customizable button in your application that you can implement in a few minutes.
- [Plugin for Strapi](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/api-video-strapi-plugin-add-videos-to-your-headless-cms) - a powerful, easy, and secure plugin to bring video content to your websites and applications using the Strapi headless CMS.
- [Player for Flutter](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/api-video-player-for-flutter-playback-videos-on-your-apps) - an api.video customizable player for Flutter built natively for Android, iOS, and the web.
- Players for [Android](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-add-an-api-video-player-to-your-android-application) and [iOS](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-add-an-api-video-swift-player-to-your-ios-application) applications- api.video players that help you include your videos in your Android or iOS applications easily and quickly.
- [Fully accessible player](https://api.video/player/) - with ARIA attributes present; the player is fully accessible to all screen reader users.
- [Next.js boilerplate](https://github.com/vercel/next.js/tree/canary/examples/with-apivideo) - a simple way to start implementing api.video with Next.js.

We are introducing a lot of exciting new tools in 2023 🎊  Don’t miss out! Follow us on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/api-video/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/api_video) to receive the latest updates! 

## **New features inspired by you 🗣️**

We believe that the only way to grow is by listening to our customers! We listened, and here are some of the features that you requested ⚙️

- [Workspaces](https://api.video/blog/product-updates/workspace) - Anyone can share their api.video dashboard with a colleague or a client. It's a great way to involve stakeholders in your projects.
- [Watermark feature](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-add-watermarks-to-your-videos) - You can now add customized watermarks to your new or old videos
- [Clipping feature](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-create-a-video-clip) - With the clipping feature, you can trim your video by selecting the exact duration you desire right inside the api.video dashboard. No more going back and forth and using other tools for clipping your videos!

We have been continuously improving our product with new features and updates. However, we are just getting started! Join us on our journey to becoming better, and post your [feedback](https://api.video/contact)! 

## **New business opportunities 🌱**

We are in the video business, and the video industry is BIG! We know that there are a lot of business opportunities you can harness by using the api.video tools. Our experts worked on putting together a few demos for you to see how easy it is to create those opportunities with our tools. Here are some of the use cases designed for you 💡

- [Build a YouTube-like site with no code](https://api.video/blog/no-code/bubble-io-api-video-build-a-youtube-like-site-with-no-code)
- [Build your own TikTok](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/rebuilding-tiktok-with-api-video)
- [Create a Udemy-like learning platform](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/how-to-create-a-udemy-like-learning-platform)
- [Build a Loom-like app with just a few lines of code](https://api.video/blog/tutorials/build-a-loom-like-app-with-just-a-few-lines-of-code)

It sounds very BIG to create YouTube, but we make it so simple. Go BIG by keeping it simple and try out some of these demos for yourself. You may be the next BIG founder 🚀 It’s [free to try](https://dashboard.api.video/register)!

You can also find more use cases on our [blog](https://api.video/blog/)!

## **$12M Series A funding** 💰

We are very happy to share the news that api.video raised $12M in [Series A funding](https://api.video/blog/product-updates/we-raised-12-millions-to-let-you-join-our-video-first-world). As I said, this is the beginning of a new era for us! An era of growth. But we don’t want to grow alone. We want to grow with you 🤝

We hope that you enjoyed reading the highlights of 2022. We, at api.video love our community and want to make sure that you know how much your support means to us. Let us know how to be better by posting your feedback and any ideas you may have on our [community forum](https://community.api.video/) 🫶 

On behalf of the [api.video](http://api.video) team we would like to wish you a happy holiday season and here is a video 🎬 we made just for you 🎄




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Highlights of 2022:  all-in-one infrastructure & growing ecosystem

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Cédric Montet

**I couldn't be more excited to share news of api.video $12m Series A, led by Mina Samaan at MMC, with participation from Open Ocean, Blossom Capital, and Financière St James!**

## We are living in a video-first world.
Yet, managing online video is complex, and building a mashup of services to let your users upload and share a video from your app is a nightmare for every developer.

We’re thrilled to have already empowered +30,000 developers and +500 products, while most of them haven’t a single clue of what’s a video codec or a CDN over the last 18 months.

Implementing video features into their apps and platforms in minutes drastically increases their end-users engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Moreover, unlocking videos everywhere lets great new use cases flourish every day on top of the API.

From a few new videos uploaded every hour in 2020, half a dozen are uploaded every minute today while viewers from +100 countries enjoy a buffer & latency-free streaming experience.

Building our own Infrastructure from Day1 has been seen as a crazy bet (and not a quiet ride, to be honest 🙂), but the difference is real. We cannot recount how many times customers were stunned by the speed of the service and asked us, « how are you doing that? » 

### The tailwinds are shaping new video usages

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As video production is highly commoditized thanks to the smartphones we have in our pocket, new networks —5G, fiber— let us upload heavy videos in seconds, this bet was the right thing to do. We use to say that we are more than a software company: we are building a true video backbone that can be reached through an API. And the tipping point is now.

### Focus on new milestones

We can't wait to deploy this new capital to keep building the video EDGE infrastructure beneath api.video, providing its outstanding performances to a broader audience, and executing our product roadmap.

With this new round comes new milestones, and ours is to ingest 1 Million new videos within the next six months and 1 Billion by 2027. It will massively increase the size of our Infrastructure while, in the meantime, after Crypto, Video has the most important carbon footprint over the Web. We have to address this global problem at our level and join our effort against global warming.

### Team effort

I owe a huge thank you to the tremendous api.video team that is brilliantly tackling the complex, technical and deep challenges daily and to all our investors, advisors, customers, and coaches for their unwavering dedication to our mission.

As a founder, this is the most incredible reward you can get, and I can’t wait to meet you if you want to [join our journey](https://jobs.api.video/)!

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We raised $12M to let you join our video first world

We’re excited to explain how you can use our sandbox environment to play with our API without spending any money 💸 or fearing generating usage overages. Simply relax 🧘 and explore our video API capabilities without needing a credit card.   

## What is the purpose of the sandbox environment?
api.video’s sandbox environment functions as a testing environment. It enables you to try out our product at no charge. In our sandbox environment, you can upload and stream videos. Simply follow the following steps:

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1. [Log in](https://dashboard.api.video/login) to the api.video dashboard, and go to the [API keys](https://dashboard.api.video/apikeys) page
2. At the top right, select “Sandbox” as your preferred environment
3. Copy your API key, and start playing with our API through your sandbox environment.

## How can the sandbox environment be helpful to you?

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#### Discovering our API

Let’s say you just signed up for our service and want to try to upload and stream videos with our service, only you are not sure yet how this works 🤔 , and you do not want to break anything. The sandbox would then be the right place for you to get familiar with our video API routes.

## Testing our API performance

Suppose you want to test api.video’s upload or delivery performance, feel free to try uploading and watching videos with the sandbox. You will get a fair idea of the upload speed and the encoding quality of our service 💪.  

### Testing out a new feature

The sandbox environment is the right place to start if you are already familiar with our product but wish to try out some of our more advanced features (for example, creating private videos or adding a watermark to your video). You can upload any video and try to manipulate it accordingly in the sandbox environment.

### Are there limits to the sandbox environment?
* We display a watermark to prevent content abuse
* Your video length will be capped at 30 seconds
* The video disappears after 24 hours 👋

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### What if I don’t want any limitations or watermarks on my videos?

Simply subscribe to one of our paid [plans](https://api.video/pricing/) if you haven’t already 😉

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How our sandbox environment can help you test our API for free

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Twitter Jose

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LinkedIn Jose

José Barcelon-Godfrey

The [api.video dashboard](https://dashboard.api.video) is the first step to getting started with our API - whether you are accessing your API key for the first time or quickly uploading a video on the fly. The second step is implementing the API into your app or product. 

Our goal is to help you quickly implement video into your app by facilitating communication between the two services.

facilitate communication between the two services.

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A little over a year ago, we released our [first iteration on webhooks](https://api.video/blog/product-updates/new-feature-webhooks) which enabled developers to receive events when a **video quality had finished being encoded**.

This opened up a series of potential use-cases enabling product builders to know when a user’s video is ready to be watched. Once a video is ready, using webhooks, you can build follow-up actions to give your users a better experience. 

We later introduced other events for you to capture, such as **when a user starts and stops broadcasting a live stream** or when a **live stream has finished being recorded.**

But up until now, setting up webhooks was only doable through the API. This could be done by making a curl request on the command line or by building your own custom form to make things easy.

## Sometimes you just need a form.

You can quickly set up the endpoint to receive live events from api.video, saving you precious development effort and time.

set up the endpoint to receive live events from api.video

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Along with the action of creating webhooks, you’ll also find a new webhooks list and delete actions to help you deal with your endpoints without the hassle of code implementations.

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## Shortcut to the important stuff

Once you’ve set up your first webhook endpoint, you can now focus on building the workflow when receiving the event. 

Here’s an example of data your newly set up endpoint will receive when the quality has finished encoding.

Learn more about what you can do with webhooks from our blog [webhooks articles](https://api.video/blog/endpoints/webhooks) or our [docs](https://docs.api.video/reference/post-webhooks).

## More to come

Over the coming months, we’ll be making more and more enhancements to our Dashboard, making it even more straightforward for you to create your dream video features. 

We hope these changes make it faster and easier to manage your webhooks and speed up implementation. We’re constantly working to make the Dashboard more productive for you — [please send us ideas and feedback](https://community.api.video) on what we should improve next!

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Setup Webhooks from your api.video Dashboard: a feature to save you time.

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Olivier Lando

As we all know, WordPress is an excellent platform to use for building your own website because it is easy to you. The variety of plugins at your disposal is a game-changer, especially if you do not code. 

We're pleased to announce our new WordPress integration on the [Wordpress plugins directory](https://wordpress.org/plugins/api-video/). 
If you have a WordPress website or blog, our plugin will allow you in a few clicks to:
* embed any of your videos in your WordPress content using our HTML5 video player
* manage your videos from your WordPress admin interface: list all your videos, upload a new one, and edit existing ones

All you need is: 

1. A WordPress website 🤓
2. An api.video API key (get a free sandbox key [here](https://dashboard.api.video/register))


## Installing the api.video WordPress plugin

### Adding the plugin from the plugins library

The easiest way to install the plugin is to use the plugin search. Log in to your WordPress administration area, and go to the **Plugins » Add New** page. 

Plugin installation from the plugins directory

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You'll see a screen like the one above. In the top-right search area, type "api.video". You should see the api.video plugin appear. 

Click on the **Install now** button on the api.video plugin card. After a few seconds (or minutes, depending on your connection), the **Install now** button changes to **Activate**. Click on **Activate** to activate the plugin. That's it; the plugin is installed!

### Setting up the plugin

There is one last step before using the plugin: you have to enter your api.video API key in the plugin settings.

A new entry called **api.video** automatically appeared in your administration menu after you installed the plugin. Go to the **api.video » Settings** page.