Overview - Analytics

Events Collection Overview

Report playback and engagement events back to Kaltura's analytics system. The standard Kaltura Player v7 handles event collection automatically via its built-in analytics plugin — this guide is for custom players, server-side tracking, and application-level instrumentation.

Base URL: https://www.kaltura.com/api_v3 (stats.collect), analytics server (trackEvent)
Auth: KS passed as ks parameter in POST form data
Format: Form-encoded POST, format=1 for JSON responses

Services covered:

Service	Description
stats.collect	Server-side event collection (API v3)
analytics.trackEvent	Application-level event tracking (separate analytics server)
Player Analytics Plugin	Built-in event reporting in Kaltura Player v7 (reference implementation)

When to Use

• Custom player developers reporting playback events from non-Kaltura players to feed Kaltura analytics
• Application teams tracking viewer behavior, page interactions, and CTA clicks alongside video events
• BI integration projects instrumenting server-side or client-side event collection for external analytics pipelines
• Mobile and OTT app builders implementing analytics parity with the Kaltura Player v7 built-in plugin
• Marketing and product teams segmenting analytics by application, user cohort, or custom context fields

Prerequisites

• KS type: USER KS (type=0) or ADMIN KS (type=2) with a userId set for per-user attribution
• Plugins: No additional plugins required; the Kaltura Player v7 handles event collection automatically
• Session guide: Generate a KS using session.start or appToken.startSession (see Session Guide)

Authentication

Event collection endpoints accept a KS for user attribution. Include userId in the KS to tie events to a specific user. Use the appId KS privilege for per-application segmentation.

export KALTURA_SERVICE_URL="https://www.kaltura.com/api_v3"
export KALTURA_KS="your_kaltura_session"
export KALTURA_PARTNER_ID="your_partner_id"

For analytics.trackEvent, the analytics server has a separate base URL:

export KALTURA_ANALYTICS_URL="https://analytics.kaltura.com"

Generate a KS with userId via session.start (see Session Guide):

curl -X POST "$KALTURA_SERVICE_URL/service/session/action/start" \
  -d "secret=$KALTURA_ADMIN_SECRET" \
  -d "format=1" \
  -d "type=0" \
  -d "partnerId=$KALTURA_PARTNER_ID" \
  -d "userId=viewer@example.com" \
  -d "privileges=appId:my-custom-player"

The appId:<name> privilege tags all analytics from this session under a named application, enabling per-application analytics segmentation.