The Upload API is the best way to programmatically get new videos and files into your Wistia account.
If you are looking to have site visitors upload content, you should create a new access token with upload permissions for that.
Uploading to Wistia
To upload a file from your computer, supply the required parameters and POST your media file to https://upload.wistia.com as multipart-form encoded data.
Uploaded media will be visible immediately in your account, but may require processing (as is the case for uploads in general).
Note
The Wistia APIs were specifically built for videos in projects. We do not formally support using our APIs for audio files in projects, or audio or video episodes in Channels at this time. For the most reliable experience, we recommend continuing to use these for videos in projects.
Importing Web-hosted Content to Wistia
To import a file from another web server (such as Amazon S3, Dropbox, or other cloud service), supply the required parameters as a standard form-url encoded POST to https://upload.wistia.com.
The file URL must end in the correct file extension, for example ".mp4". Imported media will also require some processing time, which varies depending on the file size and connection speed.
Authentication
- All upload requests must use SSL (https://, not http://).
- The required access_token should be added to the head of the request as a bearer token. You can find an example here.
The Request
POST https://upload.wistia.com
All parameters (with the exception of file and access_token) may be encoded into the request body or included as part of the query string.
The file parameter must be multipart-form encoded into the request body.
The access_token must be included in the request header.
While most uploads will be picked up immediately, there is a possibility for a delay due to high traffic or system maintenance. If url includes an authorization grant (like a presigned S3 URL would) then we suggest that you configure the grant to be valid for at least a few hours. This will ensure that we'll still be authorized to download your content when the upload runs.
Examples
cURL is a great way to try out the Upload API and an excellent method of uploading files to Wistia via the command line.
Uploading a media file with cURL
$ curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" -F file=@<LOCAL_FILE_PATH> https://upload.wistia.com/
We expect a multipart/form-data POST to the server, with both file and
access_token parameters. Feel free to tack on additional parameters, like
name and project_id:
$ curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" -F name=<NAME> -F project_id=<PROJECT_ID> -F file=@<LOCAL_FILE_PATH> https://upload.wistia.com/
Importing a media file via URL with cURL
$ curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" -d "url=<REMOTE_FILE_PATH>" https://upload.wistia.com/
We expect an application/x-www-form-urlencoded POST to the server, with the
url param and a provided access token.
If your URL includes multiple query parameters, you will need to encode it. This
is important for pre-signed Amazon Web Services S3 URLs, for example.
$ curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" --data-urlencode "url=<REMOTE_FILE_PATH>" https://upload.wistia.com/
Using the OAuth2 Access Token
If you are using the access_token param with OAuth2, it should be provided in the header, like:
curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN_HERE" https://upload.wistia.com/
If you are importing the media file via URL, you can also include the access_token as a POST param.
Video Limit
The most common error that all implementations should beware of is a 400 due to reaching the video limit of your account. Not all accounts have video limits, but for those that do, you will receive a 400 response with JSON like:
{
"error": "This account has exceeded its video limit. Please upgrade to upload more videos."
}