I have some audio and video files which will be served from server to browser on request. Now I need a way by which "Users can watch or listen to media but shouldn't be able to download in anyway (even with developer tools or download manager plugins)". Kindly share your ideas if you have had experience on this.
If you are streaming it to them you can't stop them downloading it as, in extreme cases, they can simply capture the network traffic.
It sounds like you may want to encrypt the content using one of the commonly used encryption techniques and then find a secure way to share the encryption key with your users and their devices/players. This way any captured or downloaded content will not be of use to anyone without the right key.
This is essentially what DRM technologies do so it would probably be worth you investigating them - you can integrate the functionality to your own sever or simply host your videos with a provider who provides the functionality and embed their video player on your site.
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DISCLAIMER :) :)
Some of them may think it's not relevant for discussion as it does not
fit here. Why not? As I think in StackOverflow we find smartest people
around the globe. Even if I try to create in other StackOverflow
domains it won't be that visible.
NOTE: So if your the kind of guy who is trying to pull this down. Please
have some pity on me as I won't get good answers in other Q&A sites
like Quora
I would like to understand how companies like UDEMY protects the videos that are not allowed to download. I know they cant just fully protect but can harden it via various methods. Some of them what I found is as follows:
In Udemy I saw with point 3. Sounds interesting.
Starting from basic one
1. Disable right-click to download (Can be hacked by disabling the browser js).
2. You can use custom video libraries or no download options but god knows how fairly it plays. As I was able to download that kind of video.
3. Using BLOB URL for the video, this downloads the video in bytes. (Kind of secure using but can use HLS video downloader)
4. Can use On-demand live HTTP video streaming from Amazon or Vimeo but over time they may cost much price.
5. Then I read about large giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime uses multiple streaming files which will be stored in different chucks. Which makes it harder to download.
Any other ways you guys might have found an interesting way to harden it would love to hear.
AT THE END OF THE DAY USER CAN STILL SCREEN RECORD YOUR VIDEOS DAMMMMMM IT!
Streaming IS downloading. If you want someone to be able to watch a video, you MUST let them download it.
The way large sites protect the content is not through downloading, but by encrypting the files BEFORE they are downloaded. Then the player knows how it request the decryption key from a DRM server.
For more information, read about DRM and EME on Wikipedia.
We've been asked if we can help a client stream uploaded video files while overlaying a unique watermark per user, eg, their email address or username. Security on the stream needs to be good, but not necessarily ironclad. That is, enough to put someone off trying to grab the bits outside of the player (so some encryption is very helpful), while the overlay would hopefully make it clear that re-recording it, or saving the file, would help us track the perpetrator.
I was hoping some combo of Azure Media Services and the Azure Media Player might be able to do something like this, but for the life of me I can't find anything online about it.
We're not wedded to Azure if it's not possible using that service but is through an alternative.
Thanks so much for your help. It feels like this shouldn't be a unique request, but I can't find anything on Google. Maybe my search terms are letting me down.
It really depends if you are trying to do server side watermarking or client side watermarking. Currently Azure Media Services doesn't have support for server side watermarking.
However, this is easily achieved on the client side with Azure Media Player -> because the player uses HTML elements, you can easily add an additional HTML element for your overlay and style it with CSS to display the required information.
I need to develop a system to stream media over the web to subscribers (like Netflix). It's very important that my consumers can't "save on disk" my videos, since I'll be billing them by the minute watched...
I would like to know how video-streaming-DRM software, like the one behind Netflix, actually work. How the encryption happens? Do they use symmetric keys? I don't need specifics about the implementation, not now at least, but rather a overview of the whole system (client and server)
Extra Info:
-I will be the one uploading videos. The user wont upload videos
-I intend to build this as a Azure Cloud Native App
-I have not yet decided on the client side yet. Since my target public is quite narrow, I'm considering if I should build a app client or web-client... in case of web I would like to leverage the new DRM capabilities ...
-The server side will be C#
-It's safe to assume that the end-user will have a "decent 3ยบ world" internet connection (at least 1 Mb/s)
Although quite reasonable, your question does not really fit the Stack Overflow's format. But I'll give you some hints and resources to check out:
Microsoft PlayReady Overview - check it and related pages (like Learn More, White Paper)
EZDRM
Content Protection with Windows Azure Media Services
Task Preset for Windows Azure Media Encryptor
Clients of DRM protected content can be developed in Silverlgiht, Windows Store App, iOS native app (this one is not open to the wide public!). Never tried Android and HTML 5.
In short - don't worry! If you use a DRM solution, your users will not be able to save the videos. However, one can always do a screen capture using [Expression Encoder Screen Capture | Camtasia Studio | Any screen capturing software]. So there is no full 100% content protection.
I'm doing a language web site for my university language center, where students login and see videos to learn English. i have to do it like this,
person is logging in to the system, search using a search area and find the details,lessons and videos relevant to that videos. this functionality exactly matches the youtube scenario.
for implementing twitter like functionality we can use status-net, is there a similer library, statusnet like famous implementation for youtube or a some kind of platform or a framework like codeigniter that we can use to implement youtube like site very easily??
please suggest some options?? a open source one or a commercial one ???
and what is the best video format to use in a such web site?? flv?? mp4?? or mov???
regards,
Rangana
Your best option is to use a 'cloud' based video processing service. Most have a sample project / library for many different languages and frameworks. Here is a list of a few I've tried and liked:
http://zencoder.com/
http://transloadit.com/
http://pandastream.com/
The typical steps involve uploading the video files to a large 'cloud' static asset host (such as S3) through the browser. If you are inexperienced it is best to select a processor that provides an uploader (it will handle putting the files in the right spot). Of the three, Transloadit and Panda both have custom unloaders.
Usually the service will allow you to either pass the encoding settings (what formats and qualities to) output to as parameters or configure them in your account. To support all current HTML5 browsers you just need H264 (.m4a) and OGG (.ogv). However, the new trend in the video world is for WEBM (.webm) so you might want to include it as well.
Next you will receive a unique code from the web service that you must store in persistent storage (database). The web service can be configured to 'callback' (perform an HTTP POST or GET request to your service) once the video is encoded.
Once your recieve a callback you can activate your video and start dislpaying it on your pages. For displaying, if you are inexperienced I'd highly recommend you use one of the following players:
http://sublimevideo.net/
http://longtailvideo.com/
http://videojs.com/
They all do similar things for different prices. My current personal favourite is Sublime Video (it offers cool light box effects and a gorgeous player).
Why do you have to re-implement Youtube when you can just use it for hosting your videos for free? Many online e-learning portals (e.g. Khan academy) do exactly that.
As far as the best video format to use -- go read about H.264/AVC. It's what Youtube currently uses.
I think you will not find already built solution ;)
But it's not really that hard. You can use existing frameworks that will make your life easier while you build account management system, the rest shouldn't be really that hard (assuming you don't really want to re-build the whole Youtube ;D ).
For playing videos, you can use JW Player. A great piece of software, you should check it out.
Sorry if the question is confused, as I'm confused myself. I'm working around these requirements:
I'm building a public website where I need to display video.
I need to control what the player looks like
I'm the sole publisher of the video, meaning it can't be on YouTube for example
I need as much protection as possible in terms of protecting the content from being downloaded
So, I've read around StackOverflow and the web, and found lots of suggestions, like numerous flash players, Streaming servers, DRM protocols, services like Panda etc etc.
The problem is I don't understand how everything fits together.
For example, what makes my video content secure?
Is it the player on the client? is it the server that hosts the content? is it the streaming process? who hosts the streaming servers and what difference does this make?
Bearing in mind this is otherwise a very simple site, and is not a business venture.
if you were working around my requirements, what would you do? Could you explain step by step at a high level?
EDIT:
Just based on a couple of answers, I'm not saying no one can ever download my content. And I realize this kind of thing is expensive.
I'm just asking, if you had my requirements, what would you do? And could you explain it to me so i understand?
thanks again
Edit:
Thanks again for all the feedback, I can't vote anyone up as I'm a new user, but your answers have been very helpful.
The one thing I will say, is that my only request was to attempt security, that is 'make it difficult' for most users...that is common in software security.
Some of the suggestions have been just to not even try.
My question was really based around the fact that I know nothing about video deployment on the web, apart form the basic embedded swf flv combo.
Anyway, your info has been very useful though. I'll try a simple "real" streaming service (as opposed to HTTP streaming).
Any other recommendations would be awesome
cheers
"For example, what makes my video content secure? " Nothing.
"Is it the player on the client?" Neither. Anyone can write a client and retain the video content. Remember this. Anyone can write a client. This client can absorb and save your video. Nothing can stop this. Nothing.
"is it the server that hosts the content?" No. Server is only one piece of security. You have to secure the protocol. And the client. And anyone can write a client and retain the video content.
"is it the streaming process?" No. Protocol is only one piece of security. You have to secure the server, the protocol and the client. And anyone can write a client and retain the video content.
"who hosts the streaming servers and what difference does this make?" You host the streaming video servers. Otherwise, you might as well use YouTube.
Edit
"The problem is I don't understand how everything fits together."
"For example, what makes my video content secure?"
These are unrelated. You keep mentioning security, AND not knowing how "everything" fits together.
Here's a suggestion: stop mentioning security -- edit your question to eliminate all references to security and see if you get more useful answers.
Many companies sell streaming media servers. You put HTML in your page that references the streaming media site.
Example. Apple sells Quicktime media server. Read http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/Conceptual/QTScripting_HTML/QTScripting_HTML_Document/chapter_1000_section_1.html for lots of information on how to present video from quicktime.
Before you go too far worrying about setting up these secure streaming protocol client server whatevers, make sure you weigh up the cost of your time getting this going, versus the cost of someone downloading your video.
Just to be clear: if your server is sending to a client, then they can copy (download) it. There's no way around it.
Response to your comment:
What I'd probably try doing if you wanted to try to avoid users downloading the files is this (I'll assume you're using FLV files, since they're the de facto standard on the web these days):
Put the FLV files in a non web-accessible directory.
Have a player.swf file request the file via a script on your site, eg: video.php?file=myVideo.flv
The video.php can then perform whatever security checks you'd like: for example, require logins, check the referrer, etc.
If the security checks are ok, then pass through the appropriate video file. If not, then perhaps have a short back-up video which is an ad for your site or something, saying "to watch this video, please come to mysite.com!"
Mostly video streaming sites like Hulu achieve a kind of poor-man's security by using RTMP to transfer the video data. You would need special server software to serve video via RTMP, for example Adobe Flash Media Server or WebORB.
RTMP is a proprietary protocol, so this is a case of security through obscurity; it's non-trivial to download a copy of the video (you can't just grab the file from a URL), but there are programs out there that are capable intercepting the stream and keeping a copy.
2.I need to control what the player looks like
Download and customise a free player like OSFLV.
4.I need as much protection as possible in terms of protecting the content from being downloaded
Forget it.
DRM for FLV exists, but you'll have to pay Adobe a load of money for Flash Media Server and Flash Media Rights Management Server, you'll lose client compatibility and ease of deployment, and in the end it's still breakable. Big old waste of time.
Accept that some people will download your videos, and put a big watermark on them so at least when they do you're getting free advertising.