Player API Overview

This document provides an introduction to the Brightcove player framework, a powerful way to build customer-facing video-centric UI for your websites. The framework is built entirely in Flash Player 9 technologies for fast performance, secure communications and true full-screen video playback.

Architecture

The framework is composed of players, components, and widgets, each of which exposes APIs for working with their specific functionality. Player components include high-level functionality like Advertising, Video Playback, and API interfaces, as well as UI-based functionality like the VideoPlayer, TabBar, and Image objects. Both types of elements are required for a functional experience, although the goal of the framework is to make it possible to mix-and-match these elements for custom look-and-feels.

You can arrange components in a Brightcove player. In the Brightcove Studio Publishing module, you can create instances of players based on player templates that have already been defined.

Here's a diagram of a few of the Tabbed player's components:

Check out the Player API Reference for the list of components available in a player.

A player is defined using BEML, an XML markup language that defines the components, layout, and style of a player. Using BEML, you can create custom player templates and add them to your Brightcove account, using the Publishing module. You can also access the player's components using the Player API. For information about using BEML, see Customizing Players with BEML.

Player API

If you enable the API for your player, you can access and control the player and its components using JavaScript or ActionScript, depending on whether you choose to publish a player in an HTML page or Flash application.

The Player API Reference lists all of the methods and events each component supports. You can also:

• read the Player API JavaScript introduction or the Player API ActionScript introduction
• examine the Player API Examples

to learn how to use the API to customize, integrate with or add functionality to your players.