Up until now, embedding YouTube videos in an Android application was a big hassle because of the lack of a dedicated API for embedding the YouTube player natively. Keeping this in mind, Google had announced such an Android API this year at Google I/O 2012. Six months later, that promise has just been fulfilled.
It provides easier integration without any requirement to implement WebView as it was done before. This will be available on Android 2.2 or newer and will definitely help in improving the quality of video integration currently the apps are able to provide. It will also enable more monetization opportunities with the help of YouTube ads support. A major life saver will be the availability of programmatic access to video playback, which will drastically change the way video discovery and other such applications tend to work and will provide much more creative freedom to app developers. Other features include fullscreen and orientation change support, closed captioning and integration with the YouTube app.
According to the YouTube API blog, several popular applications have already implemented this API, which include Flipboard, Buzzfeed, 9×9.tv, SoundTracking and Skimble.
Several code samples have been set up on Google Code to get you started with good examples along with some documentation and an introductory video playlist, which has been uploaded to get you started with implementing those new features in your Android application.
While this API is being launched as an experiment, the blog says that no major external changes are to be expected further and app developers can start using it right away!
