Static URL Delivery

Introduction

Brightcove provides static URLs to video manifest files for assets in your Video Cloud library. This gives you the flexibility to manage your content in your own CMS, and deliver it using a custom security schema.

This is important for customers who have existing architecture that does not allow a Playback API call before needing the manifest url(s). The player can also use this feature, reducing playback start time by eliminating one call.

Requirements

The following requirements are needed for static URLs:

Account setup

To sign the JSON Web Token (JWT), your Brightcove account needs to be enabled for Playback Authorization Service. Contact your account manager to have this done.

Analytics registration

With static URLs, you are integrating with the Playback API without using the Brightcove Player. While the Brightcove Player automatically sends analytics data to Brightcove, you will use the Data Collection API to do this.

If you are not familiar with the Data Collection API, review the Overview: Data Collection API document.

For details about sending information to the Data Collector, see the Data Collection API Sample.

Video Cloud

Today, every playback through VideoCloud requires 2 API calls to start video playback. With the use of static URLs, you can reduce the number of API calls to just one.

The following diagram shows the API calls for video playback, without static URLs.

Static URLs

With Brightcove's Playback API v2, static URLs are now avaiable.

Features

Here are the features associated with static URLs:

Implementing Static URLs

Static URLs include the following:

• Account ID
• Video ID (or reference)
• Delivery Type (HLS,Dash)
• Configuration options (SSAI, DRM, CDN, etc.)

These URLs are secured using a customer generated and signed JSON Web Token (JWT). With this token, you can configure and enforce aspects of delivery. For details, see the Creating a JSON Web Token section.

Domain

The domain used for Static URLs is the Playback API v2 (PAPIv2) URL:

https://playback.brightcovecdn.com/playback/v1/

Endpoints

Static URL examples for each Delivery Type:

/accounts/{account_id}/videos/{video_id}/master.m3u8?bcov_auth={jwt}

/accounts/{account_id}/videos/{video_id}/manifest.mpd?bcov_auth={jwt}

/accounts/{account_id}/videos/{video_id}/hls.vmap?bcov_auth={jwt}

/accounts/{account_id}/videos/{video_id}/dash.vmap?bcov_auth={jwt}

Creating a JSON Web Token

To create a token to use when communicating with Brightcove's Playback API, see the Creating a JSON Web Token (JWT) document.

Claims for Static URL Delivery

The following claims can be used with Brightcove's Static URL Delivery.

Here is an example of the JSON Web Token (JWT) claims that you might use:

{
    // account id: JWT is only valid for this accounts
    "accid":"4590388311111",
    // expires: timestamp when JWT expires
    "exp":1577989732,
    // issued at: timestamp when the JWT was created
    "iat":1575484132,
    // content id: JWT is only valid for video id or reference id
    "conid":"5805807122222",
    // protection: specify a protection type in the case where multiple are available for a single video
    "pro":"aes128",
    // VOD specific configuration options
    "vod":{
      // SSAI configuration to apply
      "ssai":"efcc566-b44b-5a77-a0e2-d33333333333"
    }
  }

Using Content protection (DRM)

You can include the pro claim, as defined above, to specify a protection type.

For license requests, the JWT does not need any payload, but it has to be signed using the same RSA key as the manifest request JWT.

License request

You can use the following endpoint to get the DRM license:

/accounts/{account_id}/videos/{video_id}/licenses/{scheme}?bcov_auth={JWT}

Valid values for scheme:

• "widevine"
• "playready"
• "fairplay"

FairPlay app cert

For FairPlay app certificates, the endpoint is:

/accounts/{account_id}/fairplay_app_cert

Notes

The following notes apply to Static URL Delivery.

• In-Manifest captions are supported. Out-of-band sidecar captions will be supported in a future release.
• The customer's BYO CDN will deliver the video segments, while Brightcove's CDN will continue to deliver manifest and sub-manifests.
• Brightcove does support using a JWT that does not expire. To do this, do not include the exp claim when creating your token.

Limitations

The following limitations apply to Static URL Delivery.

• Live streams will be supported in a later release.
• MP4s will be supported in a later release.
• Delivery Rules will be supported in a later release.