api.videoDetails returns different JSON structure for transcode complete vs. processing

[looshi]

Hey Guys,
so far this is a really great library, thanks. I noticed a difference in the return structure when calling api.videoDetails as shown below. Maybe I'm doing something wrong ?

calling videoDetails like so :
VzaarApi.videoDetails(videoId, function(statusCode,data){
console.log(statusCode, data);
}, 'json');

I receive the following output :
for in process status response :
200 { 'vzaar-api': { video: { id: 2729902, video_status_id: 11, state: 'Preparing' } } }
200 { 'vzaar-api': { video: { id: 2729902, video_status_id: 1, state: 'Uploaded' } } }

for transcode complete response :
200 { type: 'video',
version: '1.0',
width: 576,
height: 432,
video_status_id: 2,
... etc.
}

so when the video_status_id is 2 , the structure of the Json return is not as deep.
It's not that big of a deal, I can work with it, but I think it would be good to make these consistent or at least document the return structure.

thanks!

[looshi]

I created this gist to show polling a vzaar transcoding job status in a Meteor.js app.
It's kind of tricky to poll in Meteor, and then store the status in the db, I think how I did it is kind of ridiculous but it works.
https://gist.github.com/looshi/2546dbbdc9a3f880a6a2

I could use some help with figuring out an appropriate polling algorithm. Like, how long to poll, and what interval, and should it backoff exponentially or something? I know it depends on many factors, but just ballpark would be good. I expect to be transcoding from all types of formats, and the videos will be less than 10 minutes in length averaging 3 minutes.

thanks

[looshi]

Also, it would be nice if the transcode complete response had an "id" property with the video id.
it just makes coding against all the api.videoDetails possible return objects more consistent.

200 {
type: 'video', // there's no "id" in this return
version: '1.0',
width: 576,
height: 432,
video_status_id: 2,
... etc.
}

[cfx]

Hey looshi,

Thanks for your feedback. I agree with you that API responses for Video Details should be consistent and have the same structure. Unfortunately we cannot change that (in API V1). If we do that, we will break existing api clients used by our customers.

[looshi]

@cfx
no worries, thanks for getting back. it's relatively easy to workaround.
thanks

[revdan]

Hi @looshi - you could also use our callback url that you can find in your vzaar settings. We will then ping that url when the video transcoding is complete.

[looshi]

@revdan
The callback URL is a great feature, but since there is only one URL per Vzaar account it doesn't work if I want to run something like a dev,stage,production instance of my site all against the single Vzaar account. If VzaarApi.processVideo() took a callback URL as a parameter that would work.
The alternative is to have multiple Vzaar accounts, which may be a good idea, but it's more paperwork.
Do you know what other customers do to handle this ? Polling is working out fine for me so far.

[revdan]

@looshi - one option is to use our multi-user account feature. You can create dev, staging and production users against the same account, each with their own api key and callback url. However if polling is going better for you then by all means go ahead :)

[looshi]

@revdan
thanks! I will setup the multi-user account feature.