iOS video transformations

Overview

After uploading videos to Cloudinary, they can be transformed in many ways.

The syntax for transforming and delivering videos is generally similar to that for images, and you can apply the majority of available image transformations to video as well. For example, you can resize, crop, rotate, set video quality and format, add text or image overlays to your videos, and more.

There are also a number of special options you can use for transforming and delivering video content. For example, you can adjust their size, shape, speed, duration, quality, and appearance. There are also some features that are specific to audio.

This section introduces you to video-specific transformation functionality using iOS.
For complete details on all video transformation functionality, see Video transformations and the Transformation URL API Reference.

Video transformation functionality

In addition to transformation features that are equally relevant for images and video, such as resizing, cropping, rotating, adding text or image overlays, and setting video quality or format, there are a variety of special transformations you can use for video. For example, you can:

• Transcode videos from one format to another
• Apply video effects such as fade-in/out, accelerating or decelerating, adjusting volume, playing in reverse
• Play video-in-video, trim videos, or concatenate multiple videos
• Set video and audio quality options such as bitrate, video codec, audio sampling frequency, or audio codec
• Adjust the visual tone of your video with 3D LUTs
• Generate thumbnails or animated images from video
• Deliver your video using adaptive bitrate streaming in HLS or MPEG-DASH

You can optionally specify all of the above transformations to videos using methods that generate image tags or via direct URL-building directives.

Deliver videos

Use the createUrl method to generate a video URL. Make sure to include the resourceType parameter set to "video".

You can also include transformation parameters in the request, for example, to return the URL for a video padded to a width of 400 pixels:

Cloudinary native video player

The iOS SDK also includes a Cloudinary native video player based on AVPlayer. This makes it easier to use the various Cloudinary video capabilities and deliver your videos using the native player.

To create a player, use the CLDVideoPlayer function to initialize it, providing either the public ID for the video or the full Cloudinary URL:

Once you have the player instance, you can embed that into an AVPlayerViewController to use in your view.

Here's an example:

Transformations

You can include video transformations as part of your CLDVideoPlayer instance in the same way as when using the createUrl method. The transformations are defined when initializing the player. For example:

Video transformation examples

This section provides examples of using iOS code to apply some of the video transformation features mentioned in the previous section.

Example 1:

The following example resizes the dog video to 40% of it's original size and rotates it by 20 degrees. It also adds a semi-transparent cloudinary logo in the bottom right corner, using a southeast gravity with adjusted x and y coordinates to reach the corner of the rotated video.

Example 2:

The following example adjusts the brightness of a skiing video, and sets its radius to max in order to give a telescope-like effect. It then appends a copy of the video in reverse, and then plays forward again, but in slow motion.

Example 3:

The following example returns the first 10 seconds of the dog video. The video is also cropped to 360X480 using the pad cropping method, and it is generated at 70% quality to control file size.