oEmbed Support for Brightcove Player

Overview

oEmbed is an open standard that allows third-party platforms to automatically display rich embedded content when a URL is shared. When you paste a Brightcove Player URL into a platform that supports oEmbed (such as WordPress, Slack, or Notion), the platform can automatically render the video with its title, thumbnail, and an interactive player — without requiring any manual embed code.

Brightcove provides an oEmbed API endpoint and is registered as an official provider on oembed.com, enabling automatic discovery across the oEmbed ecosystem.

How it works

When a Brightcove Player URL is pasted into an oEmbed-aware platform, the following happens automatically:

1. The platform recognizes the players.brightcove.net URL pattern from the oEmbed provider registry.
2. The platform calls the Brightcove oEmbed endpoint with the shared URL.
3. The endpoint returns a JSON response containing the video title, thumbnail image, and iframe embed code.
4. The platform renders the rich embed in place of the bare URL.

Supported URL formats

The oEmbed endpoint supports any URL matching the pattern:

https://players.brightcove.net/{account_id}/{player_id}_{embed_id}/index.html?videoId={video_id}
https://players.brightcove.net/{account_id}/{player_id}_{embed_id}/index.html?playlistId={playlist_id}

Examples

https://players.brightcove.net/1160438696001/RUsPQ8qzl_default/index.html?videoId=6327763506112
https://players.brightcove.net/1160438696001/default_default/index.html?playlistId=5282200243001

oEmbed API endpoint

Request

GET https://oembed.brightcove.com/?url={encoded_player_url}&format=json

Parameters

Alternative parameters (non-standard)

The endpoint also accepts direct parameters instead of a URL:

GET https://oembed.brightcove.com/?accountId=1160438696001&playerId=default&videoId=6327763506112

Example response

{
  "type": "video",
  "version": "1.0",
  "provider_name": "Brightcove",
  "provider_url": "https://players.brightcove.net/pages/v1/index.html?accountId=1160438696001&playerId=RUsPQ8qzl&videoId=6327763506112",
  "title": "Brightcove Media Studio - Product Video",
  "width": 640,
  "height": 360,
  "thumbnail_url": "https://cf-images.us-east-1.prod.boltdns.net/v1/static/1160438696001/.../1280x720/match/image.jpg",
  "html": "<iframe class=\"brightcove-embed\" src=\"https://players.brightcove.net/pages/v1/index.html?accountId=1160438696001&playerId=RUsPQ8qzl&videoId=6327763506112&mode=iframe\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen></iframe>"
}

Response fields

Platform compatibility

The following table shows oEmbed and Open Graph support across popular platforms:

Caching

Responses from the oEmbed endpoint are cached for up to 1 hour by the API Gateway. If you update a video's title or poster and need the oEmbed response to reflect the change immediately, include a Cache-Control: max-age=0 header in your request.

Try it

You can test the oEmbed endpoint directly using curl:

curl "https://oembed.brightcove.com/?format=json&url=https%3A%2F%2Fplayers.brightcove.net%2F1160438696001%2FRUsPQ8qzl_default%2Findex.html%3FvideoId%3D6327763506112"

Or paste a players.brightcove.net URL directly into Slack, WordPress, or any oEmbed-aware platform to see the rich embed in action.

Known limitations

• Only JSON format is supported. XML format requests return a 501 response.
• The endpoint requires a valid videoId or playlistId. Requests without one return a 400 error.
• Videos that are geo-restricted or require a Playback Rights token may return a 403 error from the oEmbed endpoint, as the endpoint calls the Playback API with the player's default policy key.
• Open Graph metadata is only available for players that have a video pre-assigned in their player configuration. Players that load videos dynamically via URL parameters do not include og:title or og:image tags.