New release and features: September 2020

Summer is a great time to be outside, enjoying the weather, and spending time on holidays. This was the case here at api.video - we all got some much needed vacation and sunshine.

Of course, that does not mean we were resting on our laurels. We’ve been very busy on our platform, making improvements and building for the future. This week we have a few new features that are released and ready for you (and your customers) to use:

1. Embedding videos on other platforms: All videos on our platform now support oembed, making sharing your videos on Facebook, Twitter, and other services easier. You can even natively play your videos on Twitter (and Facebook native playback is coming soon).

<iframe border=0 frameborder=0 height=550 width=550 src="https://twitframe.com/show?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fdougsillars%2Fstatus%2F1242816491084566529"></iframe>

2. Private video update: Private videos previously used cookies to store the token that allowed viewing. Browsers are moving to block all 3rd party cookies (starting with Safari 13.1). We have rebuilt the private video token system to use headers, future proofing this feature. (Read our updated Private Video Tutorial for more information.

3. Chapters: api.video allows you to mark chapters in your video, allowing your users to easily jump to different sections. Chapter breaks now appear in the timeline of the video, making seeking faster for your users. Here, we can see that we are in the “Jupiter” section of the video:

4. The player’s default colours are now orange, as seen in the timeline above, and the play button below:

If you want to customise the colors of your video player, please look at the custom player tutorial we just published.

5. New Player SDK with more features to control the player with Javascript. The sdk now gives access to all methods implemented in the player to support playerjs.io. Note that the player object apiVideoSdk is now PlayerSdk.

We have a lot more in store for the coming months. If you’d like to help us build api.video, check out our jobs page. If you have suggestions for new features, please leave a note on our community forum.