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I am getting started with the youtube api but was wondering is a few things:

  1. do i need to upload the video the youtube or can i just use it's player?

  2. if it does require me to upload to youtube, performance wise it it better?

  3. if i do upload to youtube can i make the videos private so they can be viewed from my site only without being accessible through youtube it self?

  4. do i have limits on the number of videos i can upload, or the number of playlists i can create?

  5. can i get the video thumbnail using the api?

sorry if it appears random, thanks.

Wahtever
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1 Answers1

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  1. You have to upload it.

  2. Assuming the clients are scattered around the world: yes, youtube will perform better than your own solution. If the clients are all within your building, on your network, then .. maybe. Depends on what you have hosting it, how many simultaneous and far more questions than is feasible to type out here.

More to the point on this one, if YouTube is serving the videos then you don't have to worry about that bandwidth coming from your server which may be important in terms of cost and bandwidth you need.

  1. Yes. See https://developers.google.com/youtube/2.0/reference for some details about "authorized" requests.

  2. The only limitations have to do with the length and size of the video. If you need videos longer than 15 minutes or 2GB then you need to request authorization. http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=71673

  3. See How do I get a YouTube video thumbnail from the YouTube API?

Community
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NotMe
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