The Brightcove Native SDKs

Welcome to the Brightcove Native SDKs feature level documentation! Here you can find everything you will need to know about our Native SDKs for the mobile and TV devices.

Overview

The Native SDKs are not video players themselves. Instead, they can be seen as integration points with advertising, analytics and digital rights management and closed captioning.

For a quick summary of the Native SDKs, be sure to check out this video introduction:

 

 

Native development can be complicated and there are many ways of getting video into your applications. If you’re new to the topic, we recommend reading about the options for video playback in the native environment:

Check out the following videos to learn how to create simple video apps with the Native SDKs:

Features

The Brightcove SDKs support a rich set of features including the following:

  • Captions
  • Advertising
  • Analytics
  • Content protection
  • Live playback
  • Standard UI controls
  • 360° video
  • Offline playback

For a complete list of features, see the Brightcove Native SDK Features document.

Keep current about feature level information with the Brightcove blog.

Products

Designed with native platform developers in mind, the Brightcove Native SDKs aim to minimize time to market by following the latest standards in application development across each environment.

The Brightcove Native SDKs are built on top of native player frameworks. This allows you to take advantage of the speed, performance and flexibility of the native OS, and extend it into a complete video experience that is easy to integrate. In addition, our Native SDKs follow established conventions for memory, naming, and design patterns in order to make getting started as simple as possible.

The Native SDKs are designed to integrate with the following types of devices:

Mobile devices

We provide the following SDKs for mobile devices, each specialized for their own specific purpose:

Brightcove Native SDK for iOS

The Brightcove Native SDK for iOS follows modern iOS conventions, so whether you are integrating into an established Objective-C app or a brand new Swift app, you should feel right at home.

Supported iOS Versions

Brightcove offers support for iOS and tvOS, leveraging the technology improvements from Apple. For details, see the following:

Notes

With the release of iOS 9 and Xcode 7, learn how to work with a new feature called App Transport Security (ATS).

Using a combination of internally gathered metrics and Apple's public iOS device usage data reports, the Brightcove SDK for iOS aims to reach the vast majority of users.

Brightcove Native SDK for Android

The Brightcove Native SDK for Android aims to balance reaching the vast majority of users while taking advantage of improvements in the Android OS.

Supported Android Versions

Balancing this reach with the ability to take advantage of improvements released by Google we currently offer support for several versions of Android. For details, see the following:

Notes

Using a combination of internally gathered metrics and Google's public Android device usage data report, the Brightcove SDK for Android aims to reach the vast majority of users.

Connected TV / Set top boxes

We provide the following SDKs to integrate with TV set top boxes:

Brightcove Native SDK for tvOS

Captivate your living room audience with video-centric applications on the 4th generation of Apple TV by leveraging Video Cloud content through the Brightcove Native SDK for tvOS!

Supported tvOS Versions

In order to take advantage of the latest technology improvements from Apple, we offer support for the latest tvOS releases. For details, see the following:

Notes

Learn more about Connected TV apps using the Native SDKs.

For customers who want to create compelling experiences for Apple TV without the developer costs associated with it, Brightcove offers a solution that includes a user experience (UX) design, high performance video playback, easy to manage content catalog and robust analytics. Check out the Brightcove Jump Start for Apple TV.

Brightcove Native SDK for Android

Expand your video content reach to include a variety of Android-based smart TV platforms and Fire TV, using the Brightcove Native SDK for Android.

We currently offer support for:

  • Android TV
  • Fire TV (FireOS 5.0+ devices)

Learn more about Connected TV apps using the Native SDKs.

Signing up

The Brightcove Native SDKs are a part of both the Brightcove Video Cloud and Brightcove Player packages! Signing up is easy, just contact us.