Managing API Authentication Credentials

This topic provides an overview of creating and managing API authentication credentials.

When you use the Brightcove APIs, your method calls will require access tokens unless you enable basic authentication in the Player Service Settings. For more information on enabling basic authentication, see Managing Account Settings.

Creating client registrations

The API Authentication page is used to create new client registrations. When creating registrations, you can select the service and the roles that will be enabled with the registration.

To create a new client registration for your account:

Open the Admin module.
Click API Authentication. The API Authentication page opens, displaying your current client registrations.

Note: Only the client registrations for the account you are logged into will display.
Click + Add application
Enter a Name and Description for the client registration.
Select one or more of your accounts for authorization.
Select the API(s) and permission(s) to enable for this registration.

Notes:
For GAM/Google Ad Manager inegration, the API permissions needed are CMS Video Read.

Selecting a large number of accounts and APIs may cause the HTTP header size to become large and invalid. The maximum header size that our server accepts is 8K, which means that you must select 30 accounts or less to apply the credentials to. For security reasons, we recommend that you limit the scope of permissions for a set of credentials to the smallest set of accounts and operations necessary.
ClickSave.
A Client ID and Client Secret will be returned.

Note: Copy the client secret and store it in a secure location as the client secret will not be displayed again.

Managing client registrations

The API Authentication page can be used to view and manage client registrations. Click the ADMIN link in the Studio header and then click API Authentication. A list of your current registrations will display.

To view the registration details, click the on the name. From here, you can:

Modify the name
Copy the client ID
Add accounts for authorization
Select additional APIs to enable
Delete the credential

Click Save to save your changes.

Note that if a credential is created for multiple accounts, users will only see that credential if they have access to all of those accounts. For example, User 1 creates a credential for accounts A & B. User 2 logs in and only has access to account A. User 2 will not see the credential as they do not have access to account B.

Updating client registrations

Although you cannot retrieve the client secret for existing credentials, you can click on an existing credential name and then add or remove both permissions and accounts.

Deleting client registrations

To delete a client registration, click the delete icon() next to the registration or edit the registration and click Delete Registration. Deleting a registration permanently disables it and cannot be undone.

Working with GAM

If you currently have multiple Beacon accounts set up as content sources in GAM, you have two options:

You can create a unique Client ID and Client Secret for each Beacon account that’s set up as a content source in GAM. For example, if you have 10 Beacon accounts, you'd have 10 applications named GAM in your API Authentication settings in Beacon.
You can create a single Client ID and Client Secret for all Beacon accounts that have been set up as content sources in GAM. For example, if you have 10 Beacon accounts, you'd have 1 application named GAM in your API Authentication settings in Beacon.

Regardless of whether you chose option #1 or #2, for each content source that you set up in GAM, you need to provide a unique Account ID. So, you are not reducing the number of content sources that are currently set up in GAM; you're just replacing the read token with the Client ID and Client Secret, which can either be the same across content sources or unique for each.

Option #1 takes more time up front. However, if the Client ID and Client Secret are the same across all content sources (as with option #2), it will be a burden to add a new content source because you will need to generate a new Client ID and Client Secret and update all of content sources in GAM. So, Brightcove recommends option #1.