Introducing ImageKit Video API

Videos have emerged as the go-to form of content consumption, and they are here to stay. With more people streaming videos than ever before, screens capture a greater share of attention, giving businesses more opportunities to reach their audiences when they are most engaged.

In addition, 2 out of 3 buyers watch YouTube videos to get ideas and inspiration before making purchasing decisions.

As videos become a fundamental part of consumers' purchasing journey, they become inevitable to your workflow.

Businesses are now presented with a new kind of challenge where they have to use the new form of content for engagement while balancing the performance of their websites. This was certainly the case with most of our customers too.

Over the years, ImageKit's image optimization solution has powered businesses across the globe to deliver images on the web while balancing web performance.

However, it was time we extended these capabilities to videos too!

So here it is - ImageKit Video API - a simple and reliable way to create and deliver stunning visual experiences on your website.

Read on to know what the Video API has in store for you.

Sounds interesting?

📢Here are some examples of what you can achieve with the new Video API!

1) Dynamically resize videos in real-time:

Ever had the trouble of delivering videos in the right size?

Now, transform your videos by changing the URL parameters to deliver videos in the right size for your users in real-time. Resizing videos haven't been this easier ever!

One common challenge that video creators face is creating a thumbnail and sometimes using tools to create them just becomes a tedious task. With ImageKit, all you would have to do is mention the ik-thumbnail.jpg in the URL and you'll get the first frame as a thumbnail instantly!

You can also get a specific frame by using the so parameter. Add more transformations to the output using our URL parameters to nail the perfect thumbnail for your video!

2) Perfect your videos for every requirement

We believe in perfection.

Use ImageKit's cropping strategies and aspect ratio options to adapt videos as per your need. Here are some cropping strategies that you can use with ImageKit:

- Pad resize cropping strategy
- Forced crop strategy
- Max-Size cropping strategy
- Min-Size cropping strategy
- Maintain Ration crop strategy
- Extract crop strategy

Now be sure that your videos fit across platforms and devices with ease.

Not just cropping, you can also trim videos as per the requirement using ImageKit's trimming parameters. You can set an offset at the beginning or at the end of a video. You can also use the duration of the video to trim on the go by just mentioning the parameter in the URL.

You can read more about our cropping, trimming strategy, and transformations here.

3) Delivering a complex transformation? We've got your back!

Ever wanted to overlay elements to your video stressed over it?

ImageKit's overlay function lets you generate multiple overlay types and add new dimensions to your videos. With the overlay parameters you can:

Add Subtitles over video
Add Image over video
Add Text over video
Add Videos over video

Add this with ImageKit's named transformations, simplify complex transformations by creating unique named parameters that store and deliver the transformation when mentioned in the URL.

Maintain code sanity, deliver complex overlays and save time in one go!

4) Always deliver the right video format

Deliver the best video format to the end-user while taking into account various factors such as requesting device capabilities, browser support for certain video formats, etc. with ImageKit's optimal format selection feature.

5) Say no to buffer time. Deliver videos quicker than before

ImageKit's Video CDN is powered by AWS CloudFront with more than 200+ PoPs spread across 6 regions. With a reliable CDN by your side, deliver videos across the globe in milliseconds.

ImageKit also offers adaptive bitrate streaming (ABS) which ensures optimum streaming and viewing experience for different types of devices over a broad set of connection speeds.

This results in very little buffering, a fast start time, and a good experience for both high-end and low-end connections.

Currently, ImageKit supports the following streaming protocols. Both leverage existing HTTP infrastructure including CDN caching

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)
Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) protocol

Like Images, videos can be hosted from ImageKit's media library or external storage.

We are certain that video will no longer be a point of concern to our users when it comes to web performance.

Ready to start your video optimization journey?

Here's how you can do it

You can enable video optimization from the Settings section in your ImageKit dashboard or by just dropping an email to us at support@imagekit.io.

Starting November 2021, video optimizations and transformations will be billed across all our plans, with our free plan being an exception.

To ease things, we use video processing units to calculate optimization and transformation, and all our plans, including the free plan, come with a fixed number of video processing units. Any usage beyond the fixed units is chargeable.

Video processing units used depends on output video duration and resolution:

1 second of SD video output = 1 unit
1 second of HD video output = 2 units
1 second of 4K video output = 4 units
1 second of 8K video output = 8 units

Every new video transformation that has never been done before will contribute towards video processing units using the above definition. Subsequent views of the same video transformation only count towards bandwidth.

Check out our pricing plans to know more about this.

Excited to start? Sign-up for your forever free account today!

Happy optimization!

P.S: In case you are curious to know how we are changing the art of visual storytelling with ImageKit Video API, read our documentation to know more.