Video Archiving Guide
In today's world, video content plays a significant role in marketing and communication. As organizations produce more video content, it becomes essential to have a proper archiving system. Video archiving allows organizations to retain valuable content for future use, reference, and compliance purposes. Archiving also ensures that videos are accessible and available when needed.
Overview#
This article outlines best practices for archiving your video content using REST API. It will cover the available APIs and steps to follow to make your archival experiences as easy and seamless as possible.
Find Your Events#
Begin the archival process by querying List Events. You can filter the results by event ID, title, code, and start and end dates. For archival purposes, most integrations should filter for events with end dates in the past.
Example#
To get events ending after May 4th, 2023, at 3 a.m. UTC, you can make the following request. Date's are in the format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ.
This will return a list of events. Record the event ID's for the next step.
Find Your Videos#
Use the event IDs retrieved in Find Your Events to query List Videos for each event
you want to retrieve. Use the filter events
to retrieve videos for a specific event.
This endpoint returns the basic metadata for each individual video. At a minimum, you should collect the video ID, title,
and download the video thumbnail. The video thumbnail is served via a URL, which expires after 2 hours.
You can optionally store ID's for associated speakers, sessions, and exhibitors.
Example#
This will return a list of videos. Record the video ID's for the next step.
Find Your Video Renditions#
Using the video IDs retrieved in Find Your Videos, query List Video Renditions for each video ID you retrieved. Use the URLs returned to download/ingest video assets into your archival system. Generally, you will want to download the .mp4 type. The links served by this API expire in 2 hours. If they expire, query List Video Renditions again for new links.
Example#
This will return a list of renditions for your videos. Access the returned links and store the files you need.
Find Text Tracks#
Using the video IDs retrieved in Find Your Videos, query List Text Tracks to get text track URLs. Text tracks include captions and chapters.
Example#
This will return a list of text tracks for your videos. Access the returned links and store the files you need.
Optionally, Retrieve Other Objects#
Using the session ID from Find Your Events, query Get Session to retrieve their information.
Using the speaker ID from Find Your Events, query List Speakers and filter results by ID.
Using the exhibitor ID from Find Your Events, query Get Exhibitor to retrieve their information.
Additional Notes#
We recommend the following best practices for video archiving:
- It is suggested to only keep video content for up to 6 months in your account.
- URLs generated for downloadable assets have a TTL (time to live) of 2 hours. Be sure to download within that window or re-query the API to generate a new URL if it has expired.
- Past video content can be used in multiple events, so we suggest storing the Cvent video ID in your own system to uniquely identify it.
FAQ#
Can I delete videos?#
Deletion of videos is not supported via API, only by user interface within the Cvent application.
I'm a legacy Brightcove customer. How long will my videos be stored in Cvent?#
Cvent will be sending out emails to legacy Brightcove customers that we are purging their video data. Purged videos will be available for backup for up to 6 months. Brightcove tag and video ID's are required to search for legacy videos.