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Stream
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Stream
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Cloudflare Stream

Cloudflare Stream provides end-to-end video infrastructure at scale. Stream handles storage, encoding and adaptive bitrate playback for you so you can focus your core idea.

To get started with Stream, simply visit the Stream Dashboard in your Cloudflare account or sign up. Your stream videos are not attached to an domain in your Cloudflare account and you don’t need a domain on Cloudflare to use Stream.

Visit the Stream dashboard View API reference

Getting started

Make your first API request

To make your first request to the Stream API, you must obtain these pieces of information:

  1. Your Cloudflare Account ID
  2. A Cloudflare Account API Token

Step 1: Uploading your first video

Stream provides multiple ways to upload videos. For this example, we will upload an MP4 file that is stored in a storage bucket onto Stream. The MP4 file can be found here:

To make your first request, simply take the cURL command below and replace the API token, and account id placeholders with your credentials.

curl \
-X POST \
-d '{"url":"https://storage.googleapis.com/stream-example-bucket/video.mp4","meta":{"name":"My First Stream Video"}}' \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/$ACCOUNT_ID/stream/copy

This cURL command tells the Stream API to download the MP4 file and make it available for streaming. When executed, you will see a response similar to this:

{
  "result": {
    "uid": "8d717d9d1b0920ea247a4eebd747b1fd",
    "preview": "https://watch.cloudflarestream.com/8d717d9d1b0920ea247a4eebd747b1fd",
    "thumbnail": "https://videodelivery.net/8d717d9d1b0920ea247a4eebd747b1fd/thumbnails/thumbnail.jpg",
    "readyToStream": false,
    "status": {
      "state": "downloading"
    },
    "meta": {
      "downloaded-from": "https://storage.googleapis.com/stream-example-bucket/video.mp4",
      "name": "My First Stream Video"
    },
    "created": "2020-10-16T20:20:17.872170843Z",
    "size": 9032701,
   //...
  },
  "success": true,
  "errors": [],
  "messages": []
}

Step 2: Wait until the video is ready to stream

Because Stream must download and process the video, the video might not be available for a few seconds depending on the length of your video. You should poll the Stream API until readyToStream is true, or use webhooks to be notified when a video is ready for streaming.

Use the video UID from the first step to poll the video:

curl \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/$ACCOUNT_ID/stream/$VIDEO_UID

---
highlight: [6]
---
{
  "result": {
    "uid": "8d717d9d1b0920ea247a4eebd747b1fd",
    "preview": "https://watch.cloudflarestream.com/8d717d9d1b0920ea247a4eebd747b1fd",
    "thumbnail": "https://videodelivery.net/8d717d9d1b0920ea247a4eebd747b1fd/thumbnails/thumbnail.jpg",
    "readyToStream": true,
    "status": {
      "state": "ready"
    },
    "meta": {
      "downloaded-from": "https://storage.googleapis.com/stream-example-bucket/video.mp4",
      "name": "My First Stream Video"
    },
    "created": "2020-10-16T20:20:17.872170843Z",
    "size": 9032701,
   //...
  },
  "success": true,
  "errors": [],
  "messages": []
}

Step 3: Stream the video!

The uid of the video can be used refer to the video after uploading and can be used to play it using the Stream video player .

<iframe
  src="https://iframe.videodelivery.net/$VIDEO_UID"
  title="Example Stream video"
  frameBorder="0"
  allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"
  allowFullScreen>
</iframe>

Stream player is also available as a React or Angular components.

Next steps