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To create titles with the VP API you need an understanding of the W3C SOAP protocol and an environment capable of processing SOAP requests. You will also need a VP account. During set-up our team prepares a transcoding profile with recipes (output formats) according to your needs.

Root VP SOAP URL: http://webservices.visualplant.net/soap/EncodingServer.php
WSDL: http://webservicesstaging.visualplant.net/soap/EncodingServer.php?wsdl

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Overview and process:

1. To create a new title, begin by calling CreateTitleID(). Declare your publisher name (Publisher) and Passkey (Passkey) and do so on all subsequent API calls. The response will populate TitleID from VPSoapMetaData.

2. Next, you can call AssociateMetaData() with the TitleID from step 1 to populate the title with the optional metadata: Title , Description , Tags , ReleaseDate and UserID.

3. Then, call GetUploadLocation(). The response will populate UploadServer , UploadType , UploadUsername and UploadPassword from VPSoapUpload. Declare a NotificationURL only if you need to override the one established during set-up.

4. Now, use SubmitRequest() to add the title to the transcoding queue. Upload your source file (video, audio or image file) according to UploadServer and UploadType (S3 or FTP).

5. For each format processed, the VP API will send notifications to your notification URL (NotificationURL), in order of priority. The most important formats will be encoded and notified first—which is useful to allow your users to share uploads quickly while less-used formats finish encoding in the background.

List structure:

Function	Description	Parameter	Elements	Response
CreateTitleID()	Returns the Title ID for the title to be created.	VPSoapEncodingServer	Required: Publisher Passkey	VPSoapMetaData
AssociateMetaData()	Adds optional metadata for the title.	VPSoapMetaData	Required: Publisher Passkey TitleID Optional: Title Description Tags ReleaseDate UserID	VPSoapServerObj
GetUploadLocation()	Returns the type, location and credentials to upload the source file.	VPSoapServerObj	Required: Publisher Passkey Optional or automatic: PassThrough NotificationURL Message	VPSoapServerResponse
SubmitRequest()	Returns Job IDs and starts the encoding process.	VPSoapServerObj	Required: Publisher Passkey Optional or automatic: InputUser InputPass OutputFileURL OutputUser OutputPass OutputThumbPrefix OutputThumbSuffix PassThrough NotificationURL JobID Message UploadMethod	VPSoapServerObj
GetJobStatus()	Returns the status of a transcoding job.	VPSoapMetaDeta	Required: Publisher Passkey JobID	VPSoapServerObj

Element descriptions:

Publisher
The name of the publisher, e.g., your company or product name. Required in each API request.

Passkey
Your passkey for access to the API. Required in each API request.

InputFileURL
Where to upload the file (e.g. s3://bucketname/path.). Assigned by the API.

NotificationURL
The URL to your script to receive responses/notifications from the API. Populated by the API with option to overwrite.

JobID
The unique id to identify the transcoding job. Assigned by the API.

TitleID
The unique id to identify the title. Assigned by the API.

UserID
The unique id to identify the user who uploaded the title. Assigned by the API when using VISUALPLANT's user system. Optionally, you may use the field to assign a UserID from your own user system.

Title
A name or headline to describe the title.

Description
A complete description for the title.

OutputFileURL
The destination for encoded files after processing. Populated by the API.

OutputUser
The username to access the destination for encoded files after processing. Populated by the API.

OutputPass
The password to access the destination for encoded files after processing. Populated by the API.

OutputThumbPrefix
Optional prefix for thumbnail image files. Populated by the API.

OutputThumbSuffix
Optional suffix for thumbnail image files. Populated by the API.

PassThrough
Optional passthrough string for client use.

Message
Communicates messages from the API, such as errors. Populated by the API.

To view and manage titles with the VP API you need an understanding of RESTful Web Services.

• View content with GET requests
• Manage content with PUT requests

"GET" requests return a maximum of 10 titles per page, unless you specify a different value for max-results in your query. For pagination, specify start-index in your query (default start value is "0"). See an example query with results and pagination.

Replace italicized variables in each request below with your info.

XML output contains complete metadata and is typically used to populate pages with lists, thumbnails and to show credits, comments, ratings, tags, etc for a title. XSPF output is suited for playback of playlists in the Web player. You may change "XML" to "XSPF" on services below marked with "(XSPF available)".

Show Latest titles: (XSPF available)

Show titles in a category: (XSPF available)

Search titles: (XSPF available)

Search titles in a category: (XSPF available)

Search titles matching all credits: (XSPF available)

Search titles matching a single credit: (XSPF available)

Show top 100 most viewed titles: (XSPF available)

Show top 20 most e-mailed titles: (XSPF available)

Search titles owned by a user:

Show user titles:

Show user favorites:

Show if title/playlist is a user favorite: (is_favorite = 1 means title id is a favorite)

Show user friends:

Show a title: (XSPF available)

Show credits for a title:

Show comments for a title:

Show titles in a playlist: (XSPF available)

Generate Google Sitemap of your media library: (up to 50,000 returned in this request)

Use this PHP file to request the sitemap webservice and generate a gzipped file on your web server: sitemap.zip

Results and Pagination (max-results and start-index)

Example PUT requests, including inserts, updates and deletes. (Note: These services are case-sensitive. It needs to be "Insert" with a capital "I" and "Delete" with a capital "D" if written, or the cache will not overwrite with new data.)

Insert e-mail-a-friend (for e-mail-a-friend stats):

Insert user favorites (for titles and playlists):

Delete user favorites (for titles and playlists):

Insert a title impression (for viewership stats):

Additional PUT requests (e.g., edit title, description, delete, etc., will be provided with documentation to all clients.)

As with any Web site that displays dynamic content, we strongly urge the use of page-caching on your site to ensure good performance and reliability for your users. Although the VISUALPLANT API is built to accomodate many thousands of requests per second, we cannot control network-related issues. Page-caching will reduce the chances of a failed connection between your application and VISUALPLANT and improve load times. If you would like to use the VISUALPLANT Venue™ micro-site builder templates for PHP or .NET which incorporate page-caching out-of-the-box, read here.

• See examples at work.

 

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