Printable versionThe YouTube Data API provides two methods for uploading videos to YouTube. A newly uploaded video will be included in a user's uploaded videos feed a few minutes after the upload completes and YouTube finishes processing the video. In addition, a newly uploaded video will typically be included in search results a couple of hours after the upload completes and YouTube finishes processing the video. However, this delay may be longer during periods of heavy API server loads.
Browser-based uploading allows you to accept video uploads from your users without having to handle, host or proxy the actual video files. You should choose a browser-based uploading process if you do not want to host or store the uploaded video files.
Direct uploading allows you to add videos that are in your video library to YouTube. You should choose a direct-upload implementation if you want to host or store videos uploaded through your site and also add those videos to YouTube. In a direct-uploading scenario, when a user uploads a video through your site, the video will be sent to your servers. Your application will subsequently send an API request to upload the video from your server to YouTube.
Note: The YouTube Data API will not allow you to upload additional videos to accounts that already contain 2000 or more videos.
In addition to choosing an uploading method, you must also choose the authentication scheme appropriate for your application. The following sections provide additional information about the video uploading process:
You must be either the copyright holder or the authorized representative of the copyright owner for all video files that you deliver to YouTube. Similarly, users who upload videos to YouTube from your site must be either the copyright holder or the authorized representative of the copyright owner for all videos that they upload. We encourage you and your users to provide the highest quality video possible. YouTube's recommended video specifications can be found online in YouTube's Help Center and we recommend that you convey these guidelines to your users.
In addition to these guidelines, please note that video files must be 1 GB or smaller and that videos may not be longer than 10 minutes. You may compress API requests using gzip transfer-encoding. However, please note that the 1 GB size restriction still applies to the uncompressed video file.
When you upload a video, you can associate that video with one of YouTube's video categories. You can also associate the video with additional keywords, or developer tags, that you use to identify the video. By using developer tags, you can identify all of the videos uploaded through your website or even through specific areas of your website. YouTube will not display developer tags to YouTube users; however, you can retrieve or update videos that match a specific developer tag.
Note: You can only associate developer tags with a video at the time that the video is uploaded. In addition, developer tags that are assigned when a video is uploaded cannot be altered thereafter.
To associate developer tags with a video, include one <media:category> tag in your Upload API request for each developer tag. Set the value of the scheme attribute to http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/developertags.cat and the tag value to the keyword you want to associate with the video. The following XML shows a sample developer tag as it would appear in an Upload API request. (You would need to replace the string TagName with the actual keyword or label you wanted to associate with the video.)
<media:category scheme="http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/developertags.cat">TagName </media:category>
In an API response, developer tags are specified in both <category> and <media:category> tags.
Note: Each developer tag that you assign will be associated with the developer key in your request. To search for videos matching that developer tag, your application would need to specify the same developer key in the search request.
To search for videos associated with a specific developer tag, send an API search request that specifies the developertags.cat category scheme and the developer tag that videos must match. The URLs below demonstrate how you would modify the standard API URL to match a developer tag. (You would need to replace the string TagName at the end of the URL with the name of your developer tag.)
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Standard URL:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/
Retrieving videos associated with a developer tag:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/
%7Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fgdata.youtube.com%2Fschemas%2F2007
%2Fdevelopertags.cat%7DTagName
Note: When you search for videos that match a developer tag, your request must specify the same developer key that you used to assign that developer tag.