What Is a Video API?

The term "video API" covers a range of different tools, each solving a different kind of video problem.

This post focuses on the last category: video hosting via a video API.

Hyperserve is a video API in this space, specifically a video hosting API, that combines upload handling, transcoding, thumbnail generation, storage, and delivery behind a single API interface.

It's built for applications that need to accept and serve video reliably, without building and maintaining custom infrastructure. Whether the video comes from users, creators, or internal teams, the challenge is the same: turn raw uploads into a managed, deliverable asset.

Files come from browsers or mobile devices, are then processed into optimized formats, and delivered globally with low latency.

The goal of a video hosting API is to remove video complexity from your codebase entirely.

A production ready video hosting API manages the full lifecycle of video in an application. It goes beyond static file serving to include:

Supporting large, unreliable uploads from browsers and mobile devices. You don't want gigabytes flowing through your app server.

Converts uploaded files into web or mobile compatible formats (like H.264 in MP4) and multiple resolutions. Users upload MOVs, AVIs, and 4K HDR; browsers need standardized, efficient files for predictable playback.

Persists originals and processed outputs in object storage with access control.

Serves video through a global CDN with fast start times and smooth seeking.

Together, these capabilities let your app treat video as any managed resource. You get create, read, delete actions, instead of a fragile collection of one off scripts, in house servers and custom workflows.

Basic file hosting (like S3 + CloudFront) works for assets you control.

But it breaks down with user uploads:

You end up building your own pipeline with queues, workers, FFmpeg, retry logic. It becomes a full time operational burden.

A video hosting API bakes those capabilities in, so you interact with video through a stable interface: upload, wait, play.

A video transcoding API only handles format conversion.

It's a critical piece—unoptimized and non standard video can break playback, increase bandwidth, and slow load times. But it's only a part of the whole system.

A video hosting API handles the entire workflow with transcoding but also uploads, storage, and delivery separately.

This distinction matters: transcoding is a function; a video hosting API is a system.

You should consider a Video Hosting API if your team:

In these cases, the problem isn't just "hosting a file." It's handling the entire lifecycle—from upload to playback at scale, reliably, and without constant tuning.

A Video Hosting API removes the heavy lifting around video so your team can focus on their core product while still shipping video features.

If you came looking for a video API and left wanting a video hosting API, we might be the right choice for you.

Hyperserve is free to try, no credit card required. You can upload a video, see it transcoded, and get a playback URL in minutes. From there, it's straightforward to integrate into your app and see how it handles for your use case.

Video infrastructure doesn't have to be a major project—the right API allows you to move fast and get back to building.