Launching your first video transcoding job via API

This tutorial will guide you on how to use Qencode's Transcoding API for creating, starting, and checking the status of a transcoding job. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Get Access Token

The access token is generated using your API key. You can find the API key in the Qencode portal. Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Transcoding -> Projects.
2. Copy the API key. You can create a new project if needed.

Use the following API request to get the access token:

curl --location 'https://api.qencode.com/v1/access_token' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--data-urlencode 'api_key=YOUR_API_KEY'

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual API key.

The server will respond with the access token, for example:

{
    "error": 0,
    "token": "5de1d971e45fa0f7a6dc77a05e893123",
    "expire": "2023-08-02T13:42:23"
}

You can re-use the access token until it expires.

Step 2: Create Transcoding Job

Use the /v1/create_task method to create the transcoding job:

curl --location 'https://api.qencode.com/v1/create_task' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--data-urlencode 'token=YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN'

Replace YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN with your actual access token.

The server response will contain the task_token value which is your transcoding job ID:

{
    "error": 0,
    "upload_url": "https://prod-us-central1-a-1-storage-gcp.qencode.com/v1/upload_file",
    "task_token": "10566ad19601a465801ae56975750123"
}

Step 3: Start the Transcoding Job

Use the task_token value when calling the /v1/start_encode2 API method to launch the transcoding:

curl --location 'https://api.qencode.com/v1/start_encode2' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--data-urlencode 'task_token=YOUR_TASK_TOKEN' \
--data-urlencode 'query={"query": {
     "source": "https://nyc3.s3.qencode.com/qencode/bbb_30s.mp4",
     "format": [
       {
         "output": "mp4",
         "height": "360"
       }
     ]
   }
 }'

Replace YOUR_TASK_TOKEN with your actual task token.

The server response will provide the status_url:

{
    "error": 0,
    "status_url": "https://prod-us-central1-a-1-api-gcp.qencode.com/v1/status"
}

Step 4: Check the Status of the Job

Get the status for the job using the /v1/status API method:

curl --location 'https://api.qencode.com/v1/status' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--data-urlencode 'task_tokens=YOUR_TASK_TOKEN'

Replace YOUR_TASK_TOKEN with your actual task token.

The server response will provide the status of the transcoding job:

{
    "error": 0,
    "statuses": {
        "10566ad19601a465801ae56975750123": {
            "status": "completed",
            "percent": 100,
            "error": 0,
            ...
            ...
        }
    }
}

This way, you can get detailed information about the transcoding job including its status, percent completion, and more.