New YouTube Developer Tools Turn Any Website Into a Video Sharing Hub
YouTube is expanding its developer tools in an effort to change the site from a video destination to an all-encompassing web video platform. The new extended API allows developers to essentially build their own private YouTube, using YouTube to handle video transcoding, but keeping the uploading interface local and branded for their own site.
In addition to the back-end tools, site developers also have access to new “chromeless” video windows with the play/pause buttons and other elements, like the YouTube logo, removed. The chromeless windows can then be skinned with the developer’s own site logo and button set to create a unique custom video player. [Update: I should point out that the YouTube watermark in the lower right corner is still there, check out this video to see what it looks like in action.]
Other new features include the ability to add and edit user and video metadata like titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts and more. There’s also some new localized feeds which can be used to grab the most viewed or top rated videos for each of the 18 international locales that YouTube supports.
The new API tools join the existing features (which were recently ported to the GData format used by most Google APIs) to create what’s undoubtedly the most powerful set of video APIs available on the web.
Now if YouTube would just embrace H.264 video encoding for hi-def quality videos (or at least the On2 VP6 codecs that Vimeo uses), the site would, by our estimation, be virtually unrivaled in both features and quality. [Just remember, YouTube exists completely above the fold, never ever, under any circumstances, scroll down to read the comments.]
As part of the announcement YouTube has released this video explaining some of the new features and taking the time to add a Steve Chen bobble head impersonation of Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer.
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