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I want to detect whether a video is playable or not outside from Youtube. I am currently detecting copyright infringement, embeddable and "syndicatable" restrictions. I am calling twice the API, once in version 3 and once in version 2 with these:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/{videoId}?v=2&alt=jsonc

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos?id={videoId}&key={key}&part=status

For the video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzmyOT1kcfc ) , I get these answers:

{

    "kind": "youtube#videoListResponse",
    "etag": "\"kjEFmP90GvrCl8BObMQtGoRfgaQ/yoB7kT2xS4cnv1zDF-EiUrfidKQ\"",
    "pageInfo": {
        "totalResults": 1,
        "resultsPerPage": 1
    },
    "items": [
        {
            "kind": "youtube#video",
            "etag": "\"kjEFmP90GvrCl8BObMQtGoRfgaQ/mk9sFeT7lpR0qthcrYeJssWlayY\"",
            "id": "TzmyOT1kcfc",
            "status": {
                 "uploadStatus": "processed",
                 "privacyStatus": "public",
                 "license": "youtube",
                 "embeddable": true,
                 "publicStatsViewable": true
            }
            "player": {
                "embedHtml": "<iframe type='text/html' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/TzmyOT1kcfc' width='640' height='360' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen='true'/>"
            }
        }
    ]
}

And :

{
    "apiVersion": "2.1",
    "data": {
        "id": "TzmyOT1kcfc",
        "uploaded": "2014-08-07T11:13:03.000Z",
        "updated": "2014-09-22T01:13:46.000Z",
        "uploader": "topgear",
        "category": "Autos",
        "title": "Aston Martin: DBS vs DB9 and Vanquish (HQ) - Top Gear - Series 10 - BBC",
        "description": "Jeremy test drives the flashy Aston Martin DBS. Clip taken from series 10, episode 6.\n\nSubscribe for more awesome Top Gear videos: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Topgear\n\nTop Gear YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/topgear\nTopGear.com website: http://www.topgear.com\n\nTop Gear Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/topgear\nTop Gear Twitter: http://twitter.com/BBC_topgear\n\nThis is a channel from BBC Worldwide who help fund new BBC programmes.",
        "thumbnail": {
            "sqDefault": "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TzmyOT1kcfc/default.jpg",
            "hqDefault": "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TzmyOT1kcfc/hqdefault.jpg"
        },
        "player": {
            "default": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzmyOT1kcfc&feature=youtube_gdata_player",
            "mobile": "http://m.youtube.com/details?v=TzmyOT1kcfc"
    },
        "content": {
            "1": "rtsp://r6---sn-5hn7su7k.c.youtube.com/CiILENy73wIaGQn3cWQ9ObI5TxMYDSANFEgGUgZ2aWRlb3MM/0/0/0/video.3gp",
            "5": "http://www.youtube.com/v/TzmyOT1kcfc?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata",
            "6": "rtsp://r6---sn-5hn7su7k.c.youtube.com/CiILENy73wIaGQn3cWQ9ObI5TxMYESARFEgGUgZ2aWRlb3MM/0/0/0/video.3gp"
        },
        "duration": 438,
        "aspectRatio": "widescreen",
        "rating": 4.917057,
        "likeCount": "2928",
        "ratingCount": 2990,
        "viewCount": 320436,
        "favoriteCount": 0,
        "commentCount": 143,
        "accessControl": {
            "comment": "allowed",
            "commentVote": "allowed",
            "videoRespond": "moderated",
            "rate": "allowed",
            "embed": "allowed",
            "list": "allowed",
            "autoPlay": "allowed",
            "syndicate": "allowed"
        }
    }
}

So what I see is that the video is both "syndicatable" (viewable on mobiles) and embeddable, but it is NOT embeddable ( https://www.youtube.com/embed/TzmyOT1kcfc?autoplay=true ==> refresh the page). The video is playing in my Android app because I'm using the official Youtube SDK so I'm guessing that, for Google, this part of my application is part of Youtube.

The question is: why in both calls, the API tells me that it is embeddable while it is definitely NOT?

I found that I can look for the class "ytp-error html5-stop-propagation" in the HTML returned by launching the embedded player with "autoplay=true" as a parameter, but it will be really expensive to parse the HTML for each Youtube video. Do you have an other way to find out if a video is really embeddable?

Last question: I click on the embedded player I provided you on this topic, it's working the first time but not when you refresh the page. Why?

qschulz
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2 Answers2

0

Yes, the API does list some videos as embeddable when they are not actually embeddable across the board. I believe Nauman Ali's explanation is accurate. Hence, a YouTube API based solution to our requirement is out of the question. However, there is one - albeit 'hacky' - way to do this. I have noticed this recently, and I feel it might come in handy for people who are looking for a solution that does not involve launching the embedded player.

Stating the observation first... I noticed that the content of the HTTP response to the request to the YouTube embed link, i.e. 'https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID' contains one specific meta tag if the video is NOT embeddable, while that meta tag is not found if the video is in fact, embeddable:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

By looking for this tag in the response, one can filter out videos that the API says are embeddable, but which are not embeddable for our purpose. Unlike the class, 'ytp-error html5-stop-propagation' which is rendered on the client side, the meta tag is served as server side HTML. This eliminates the need to launch the embedded player, which makes the method a little less expensive, I believe.

Amos P
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-1

A small subset of videos have domain-level whitelists or blacklists applied to them by their content owners. Those restrictions are not reflected in API responses There is nothing you can do; it's up to the content owner of the video to determine where they can be embedded

Nauman Ali
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