Have you ever been stuck working on a problem only to receive a solution from a friendly person you’ve never met? Some of the most helpful responses on Stack Overflow and open source code examples have been contributed by our YouTube API community members. The Google Developer Expert (GDE) program is designed to recognize the active and passionate YouTube API developers who make these outstanding contributions.

For almost a year, we’ve been recording weekly shows for YouTube API developers as part of the Google Developers Live series, hosted on the Google Developers YouTube channel. Now, if you want to get just YouTube API-related videos, check out the new YouTube for Developers channel.

As the YouTube APIs continue to evolve, release notes are a good place to keep track of improvements. However, with a busy life, you may not remember checking regularly for updates. Now, for the first time, you can subscribe to RSS feeds to be notified as soon as new features are available.

The release notes for all of the YouTube APIs and widgets have their own corresponding RSS feed.
Feeds are available for:

• YouTube Data API (v3)
• YouTube Analytics API
• YouTube Android Player API
• YouTube IFrame Player API
• YouTube JavaScript Player API
• YouTube Flash (AS3) Player API
• YouTube Upload Widget
• YouTube Data API (v2)

Going forward, we will be pushing updates via RSS for all of the YouTube APIs. Follow our YouTube for Developers Google+ page, and subscribe to the RSS feeds to get the latest API updates!

Cheers,
—Ibrahim Ulukaya, YouTube API Team

Adding a high-quality video experience to your Android application just got a whole lot easier. Starting today, you can embed and play YouTube videos in your app using the new YouTube Android Player API.

The API, which was pre-announced at Google I/O 2012, offers these benefits:

• High-quality video playback supported on Android 2.2 (Froyo) or newer
• Easy integration with your Android application (no WebView required)
• Fullscreen and orientation change support
• Closed captions display
• Support for YouTube ads
• Programmatic access, similar to existing Player APIs, to most aspects of the YouTube video playback experience
• Integration with the Android YouTube app using a standard set of YouTube Intents

We are launching the API as experimental, though we do not expect major interface changes going forward.

The Only Limit Now is Your Imagination (and ToS)

These instructions explain how to include the YouTubeAndroidPlayerApi.jar client library in your Android application. The library is supported on Android devices running version 4.2.16 or newer of the Android YouTube app.

You can use the YouTubeApiServiceUtil class’ isYouTubeApiServiceAvailable method to confirm that a device is compatible.

For a simple embed, use the YouTubeStandalonePlayer. To build a more sophisticated user interface, try the YouTubePlayerView or the YouTubePlayerFragment. Fragments can help create an engaging experience as shown in the Video Wall app example.

Play With These Apps

Here are a few interesting apps available for you to explore:

• See everything on Flipboard, all your news and life’s great moments in one place. Now you can watch YouTube videos from wherever you are in Flipboard without leaving the application, providing a more integrated and seamless experience.
• BuzzFeed delivers original reporting, scoops, and the hottest social content on the web. Android users can now view their favorite BuzzFeed content featuring YouTube videos in the BuzzFeed app and share with their friends.
• 9×9.tv enables users to discover and watch curated, topical videos that are organized into TV-like channels. Their blog describes their experience developing with the API.
• SoundTracking lets people use their mobile phone or tablet to share their music moments and favorite jams with friends and family.  Users can now discover and play YouTube music videos of the songs within their music timeline.
• Fitness Flow by Skimble helps you get in shape with high-quality exercise videos led by professional trainers. Skimble uses YouTube to stream workout content on your Android phone and tablets.

Check out a few screen shots below or download the apps from Google Play today!

Flipboard	BuzzFeed	Fitness Flow by Skimble

Learn More

If you would like to learn more about the YouTube Android Player API, the documentation is a great place to start. In addition, we have curated useful videos in this playlist. Please subscribe to the YouTube for Developers’ channel to keep up on the latest.

Check Out The Sample Code

We’ve prepared several code examples to make it easy for you to get started with the new API. You will find them on code.google.com. The description of the examples is available in our documentation. If you need additional help with the API feel free to use our support resources.

Cheers,
– Ross McIlroy, Anton Hansson, and Horia Ciurdar, YouTube Mobile Team

When we began building the new YouTube app for Nintendo Wii, we wanted to make video playback smooth and beautiful. This meant squeezing the most available power from the console CPU and fitting the video decoding process within the tight bounds of available memory. After trying out several video encoding formats on Wii, we found that 360p WebM encoding performed the best. With the largest install base of current generation consoles, YouTube on Wii is the largest deployment of WebM video in the world today.

WebM is particularly well-suited to devices where available memory is limited, because of its technical approach to video encoding. VP8, the video codec in WebM, uses reference frames (called alternative reference frames, or “alt-ref”) from which adjacent video frames are derived and compressed. This type of compression is commonly used in modern video encoding schemes, but VP8 uses the technique with particular efficiency, which results in a smaller memory footprint and smoother video playback on Wii.

We went one step further and performed low-level optimization of the VP8 decoder specifically tuned to the Wii’s processor. This included: using paired-single floating point operations to perform motion compensation, loop filtering, and idct; using the GPU to do color conversion and scaling; and dcbz instructions to copy buffers. This kind of optimization is available to anyone, as the VP8 code is open source under a BSD license.

We’ll keep looking into other ways we can use WebM, so stay tuned on this blog to learn more.

Fritz Koenig, Engineer, recently watched Phantogram – “Don’t Move”, and Matt Darby, Product Manager, recently watched “JP Auclair Street Segment.”

We’re constantly amazed at the innovative ways that developers incorporate YouTube into their applications. At Google I/O this year, 12 partners (over 30% from outside the U.S.) demonstrated their apps in the YouTube section of the Developer Sandbox, a demo area highlighting applications based on technologies and products featured at I/O.

Google’s own Daniel Sieberg, an Emmy-nominated journalist, interviewed some of our partners about their use of the YouTube APIs.

With Daniel’s hectic schedule, he only had time to interview a handful of our great partners.  With that in mind, we highlighted all the awesome apps showcased by our partners at the YouTube API Developer Sandbox.

Business.me (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API)

Code Hero (YouTube Data API)

Flipboard (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API)

LOOT Entertainment by Sony DADC (YouTube Data API)

Moviecom.tv (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API)

Parrot (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API)

PicoTube – Vettl, Inc. (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API)

Skimble (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API, and new Android Player API)

Squrl (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API)

Telestream (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API)

Vidcaster (YouTube Data API and YouTube Player API)

WeVideo (YouTube Data API)

It’s never been easier to create compelling videos and build a social presence on YouTube.  At this year’s Google I/O, YouTube product managers and channel gurus Dror and A.J. presented tips and tricks for making great content centered around raising brand awareness, raising money, and obtaining feedback about your products and services.

Don’t worry if you missed their talk, we recorded it!  So, sit back, grab some popcorn, and get ready to learn how to showcase your brand in front of YouTube’s 800 million unique visitors per month!




Click here to view the slides from the video above.

Not sold yet? Well, have a sneak peek at some of the great material they cover below, and remember Dror and A.J.’s number one recommendation: make content, not commercials!

Sneak Peek

• Tips and Tricks
• • Hook the user in the first 15 seconds (or they’ll leave)
  • Brand your channel!
  • Make the most of your budget
  • • Review YouTube’s Trends for ideas
    • Camera shy? Consider animation. (It might actually be cheaper than video.)
    • Several successful channels focus on curating videos from their community
    • Enhance your videos without fancy software/hardware using the YouTube Editor or other integrated web editors
  • Many, many more…
• What’s your goal?
• • Raising awareness
  • • Master your PR via video (include all your features and make bloggers’ lives easier)
    • Provide product/service demo videos to promote your company
    • Tell backstories about clients using your products/services
  • Raising money
  • • Add video to your crowdfunding pitch to increase funds raised by 114% (source: Indiegogo)
  • Researching and supporting users
  • • Record tutorials to promote and educate (see which features are the most popular using YouTube’s Analytics… you might be surprised)
    • Use Google Hangouts for scalable office hours and virtual focus groups
    • Figure out what features customers like/dislike via the world’s largest focus group
• Resources to learn more
• • Creator Hub
  • Creator Playbook (what you wish you knew about YouTube)
  • Trends Dashboard
  • YouTube for Developers (that’s us)

Wow, you made it this far without watching the video? Did we tell you they fill the presentation with awesome videos that showcase their points (including Chuck Testa)? Nope!? Well, now you know, and you will definitely want to watch the whole thing!

-Jeremy Walker, YouTube API Team

Many of you are already familiar with the terrific Stack Overflow website, which has become the de facto resource on the web for all types of programming questions. And many of you have been asking YouTube API questions on Stack Overflow for some time now, but haven’t received any official responses from the YouTube API Developer Relations team. That’s because, for the past five years or so, our focus has been on providing developer support via our dedicated Google Group. We’ve decided that instead of continuing to maintain a dedicated Google Group for YouTube API questions, it would help more users if we focused on responding to Stack Overflow posts.

We encourage all developers who have questions about the YouTube API to start posting on Stack Overflow today using the tag youtube-api. You can use this new question template to pre-populate the tag for you so that you don’t forget. While we’ll do our best to find and answer relevant questions that aren’t tagged with youtube-api, you’d be making our job easier (and you’d get a quicker answer) if you tag things correctly from the get-go.

Here are a few tips for folks new to Stack Overflow:

1. Before posting, search to make sure your question hasn’t been asked before. To do this, put [youtube-api] as the first part of your search, then type in some keywords that describe your problem or question.
2. If you need to ask a question, make sure you apply the youtube-api tag, as well as the tag that indicates the language that you’re using. If you’re using PHP to access the API, your question should be tagged youtube-api as well as php.
3. Make sure you watch your question after posting it, as experts that can provide you with an answer might leave comments to ask you for clarification.

Stack Overflow prides itself in being a destination for questions and answers, and not a place to file bug reports or feature requests. We ask that developers do not post on Stack Overflow for those sorts of things, and instead make use of the templates we have for filing a bug or filing a feature request in our existing public issue tracker. (Be sure to check the list of existing open issues before filing a duplicate.)

On October 15, we’ll be switching the existing discussion Google Group into archive-only mode, meaning that it will no longer accept any new posts. You don’t have to wait until October 15 to start asking questions on Stack Overflow or to file reports in the issue tracker, though.

For those developers who mainly “lurked” in the discussion Google Group and used it as a way of getting official announcements about the YouTube API, we have a number of other communication channels to recommend. Subscribing to this blog’s RSS feed is a great idea, for instance. You can also follow us on Google+ at http://google.com/+YouTubeDev. If you’d like to submit a question to one of our weekly YouTube Developers Live broadcasts, you can do that for the next upcoming scheduled show. Finally, for those who prefer to get updates via email, we will be keeping the announce-only Google Group active, and we’ll continue to post important messages there.

Cheers,
—Jeff Posnick, YouTube API Team

Update: This change also applies to  tags, which were not mentioned in the original announcement.

If you follow the YouTube Creator Blog, you might have recently seen a post announcing that video tags (also known as keywords) would no longer be displayed to viewers of a video on YouTube’s website. They aren’t going away from the video itself, though—the owner of the video can still create tags for new videos and edit tags for existing videos, and video tags will still provide an important signal used to surface relevant results when searching for videos.

We’re going to be making some corresponding changes to all versions of the YouTube Data API to mimic this behavior in API responses. Starting later today, August 28, on the staging server and September 4 on the production server, any time you get a video entry back from any API method, it will have an empty element. This is a valid response from the API that your application should already handle gracefully, since videos are not required to have any keywords to begin with.

The exception to this rule is when you make authenticated requests to the API, and you request a video entry that’s owned by the currently authorized user. In that scenario, you will get back a element that contains the full list of tags for the video, and you can read, update, or remove those video tags using the standard API operations.

Important: If your application allows video owners to update the metadata of their videos, please ensure that you include the proper Authorization header for both read and write operations. Otherwise, you could accidentally return an empty list of video tags when retrieving an existing video, and end up overwriting the video’s tags if you update the metadata. Video tags continue to play an important role in helping viewers discover your videos when searching on YouTube.com or via the API, so if your application does support metadata editing, please make sure you allow owners to tag their videos properly.

Cheers,
—Jeffrey Posnick, YouTube API Team

If you ever pay attention to your browser’s location bar, you may have noticed that, for a while now, the YouTube.com website has used playlist IDs that are prefixed with the characters “PL” when constructing the URLs for playlist pages. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL72CF07D200AA2AFA is one example of that. This practice of prepended playlist IDs previously didn’t extend over to the Data API—PL72CF07D200AA2AFA would not have been recognized as a valid playlist ID, but 72CF07D200AA2AFA would have.

Starting later today, Wednesday, August 22, the YouTube Data API will accept playlist IDs with the “PL” prefix whenever they’re used as metadata or in API request URLs. In most responses, the API will return playlist IDs with “PL” prefixes. The one exception is that for the next few days, searching for playlists will return playlist ids without the “PL” prefix. This will change on Tuesday, August 28, at which point the “PL” prefix will be included in playlist search results as well.

While we will continue to support using unprefixed playlist IDs as metadata or in API request URLs for the time being, at some point in the future we may require the “PL” prefix to be used whenever a playlist ID is provided. We’ll provide additional guidance if we do decide to stop supporting requests with unprefixed playlist IDs.

This change should be backwards compatible, but if you’re currently manipulating or comparing the playlist IDs that are returned via the API in any way, or making any assumptions about the length of the ID (which you shouldn’t be), please make sure that your code will handle IDs that contain the “PL” prefix.

If you have any questions about this changes, please let us know in our developer forum.

Cheers,
—Jeffrey Posnick, YouTube API Team

If you’ve hesitated to use the player in your app due to the IFrame Player API’s experimental status, then wait no more. We’ve removed that API’s ‘experimental’ tag, which means the API is production-ready and is covered by YouTube’s deprecation policy. Since the is the default way of sharing YouTube videos on the Web, the IFrame Player API is now the recommended mechanism to control video playback behavior in your Web applications.

To provide a consistent developer experience with the YouTube Upload Widget, we’ve changed the the URL for loading the IFrame Player API code to https://www.youtube.com/iframe_api. The old URL (http://www.youtube.com/player_api) is now deprecated, though it will continue to work. Similarly, the iframe API initialization callback name has been changed to onYouTubeIframeAPIReady from onYouTubePlayerAPIReady, also for consistency with the YouTube Upload Widget. The old callback name, onYouTubePlayerAPIReady, is now deprecated as well. If your app uses both the YouTube Upload Widget as well as the IFrame Player API, you only need to include the script once and handle a single initialization callback.

Going forward, we’ll continue making improvements to the IFrame API and make it work better with mobile platforms. As before, you can find the details about the API in our documentation and ask questions about it on our developer forum.

Cheers,
–Jarek Wilkiewicz, YouTube API Team

If you’ve ever developed a custom playback experience based on our Player API, you’ve probably used the getVideoBytesLoaded() and getVideoBytesTotal() methods to determine how much the current video is locally buffered and the size of the entire video. After obtaining this information, the next logical step is to divide the number of bytes loaded by the total number of bytes to obtain the fraction of the video that’s been buffered, which you can then display in your custom user interface.

Instead of taking this two-step approach to calculate how much of a video has buffered, we encourage you to use the new getVideoLoadedFraction() method. It will return a numerical value between 0.0 and 1.0 that represents the same fraction obtained by dividing getVideoBytesLoaded() by getVideoBytesTotal(). While those two legacy methods still work today, they are now officially deprecated, as per the terms of our deprecation policy.

getVideoLoadedFraction() allows us to expose more accurate information to your code about the state of the video that’s currently playing across a wider range of playback scenarios. When HTML5 playback was used in the Player, for instance, we previously had to return “fake” values for getVideoBytesLoaded() and getVideoBytesTotal(), as the true byte counts weren’t directly exposed via the element. The value returned by getVideoLoadedFraction() should be correct for that and other playback scenarios that we roll out in the future.

If you have any questions about the new method or anything else related to the YouTube APIs, please let us know in the developer forum.

Cheers,
—Jeffrey Posnick, YouTube API Team

Over the past few years we’ve heard two specific pieces of feedback from the YouTube API community:

1. Developers have clamored for years for a way of embedding a webcam YouTube upload widget on their web pages, similar to the webcam upload tool available at youtube.com/my_webcam.
2. Developers who have used YouTube Direct in the past have asked for a simpler solution that doesn’t require the same level of technical expertise to set up and manage.

Knowing about this demand made us particularly excited for our Google I/O announcements of the YouTube Upload Widget that supports webcam uploads, and YouTube Direct Lite, both of which are now available for public use.

YouTube Upload Widget
Using the YouTube Upload Widget on your site is as simple as adding an , like so:



Developers who want more control over the uploads experience can use a full JavaScript API to initiate the widget, and listen for events related to the upload.

YouTube Direct Lite
YouTube Direct Lite is a complete rewrite of the existing YouTube Direct platform. The goal of the project remains the same: make it possible to solicit videos from your users and then moderate those submissions into standard YouTube playlists for display. The difference is that YouTube Direct Lite is implemented purely in client-side HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, and unlike with YouTube Direct, no Java App Engine deployment is needed. You can download the YouTube Direct Lite code, customize it, and deploy it on your own web server along with the rest of your site’s content. To make things even easier, we’re hosting a canonical deployment of YouTube Direct Lite that you could include on your pages without having to deploy anything at all—just add the appropriate

You can find a live example of YouTube Direct Lite integration, including the use of the YouTube Upload Widget, on this sample page. Feel free to use that page to submit a video letting us know how you plan on using the new tools.

Bringing the YouTube Upload Widget and YouTube Direct Lite to web developers and community maintainers will give you new tools to hear from (and see!) your community, and who knows what great things will come from that!

Cheers,
—Eric Lundberg, Jeff Posnick and Vladimir Vuskovic, YouTube API Team

Whether you’re a fledgling developer looking to get started with an API or a skilled developer who wants to learn some new tricks, you’ll find engaging material at the Google Developers Academy. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is the YouTube section, which hosts courses specific to the YouTube APIs.

The first course walks JavaScript developers through the steps needed to embed an live demo of a page with videos from last year’s Google I/O conference to see the player in action.

We will be gradually adding to the YouTube section of the Google Developers Academy, and we’ll announce the new courses on this blog and our YouTube for Developers Google+ page. Stay tuned for more great resources!

Cheers,
—Jeff Posnick, YouTube API Team