YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog: Let’s Hear It From Your Users!

Engineering and Developers Blog

What's happening with engineering and developers at YouTube

Let’s Hear It From Your Users!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

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

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.

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 <iframe> to your HTML, like so:

<iframe id="widget" type="text/html" width="640" height="390" src="https://www.youtube.com/upload_embed" frameborder="0">

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 <iframe> tag to your page.

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