Embedded Media Players

What solutions have you implemented?

[pageoneresults]

2006 was the first year that I really had to hunker down and work with streaming media. I'm finding that there are quite a few intracacies involved with the various players and methods of serving streaming media.

Here's the current situation. I have a client who has a large library of streaming media. That media is being hosted by a third party. They are using Windows Media Server as a platform.

One of the problems we're having is certain users are pretty savvy and they've been finding the direct URI to the streams and posting them at forums and sharing them amongst themselves via other methods. We've done everything we can (I think) to hide the URI from our end. But, once that media player starts the third party URI for the stream is visible through the properties dialog and/or a view source.

I've now got it set up where the media is linked to a popup window that is void of most normal functions. The media player is also configured to show only those controls that are applicable. If I right click the player window, I can view properties and see the URI for the stream. If I right click the edge of the popup window, I can see the URI for the stream in three places in the source due to the use of both <object> and <embed> elements.

How can one effectively hide the URI for the streams in this type of situation? I've asked the provider if they can do a referrer check and they state that WMS does not have that facility. So, where's that leave us?

[monkeythumpa]

You can prevent hotlinking through your .htaccess file. There are a ton of posts here about that. But you may not want to. If people are picking up your video and showing it to others, that is free advertising. If you have a url back to your site those people will probably go to your site to see more. In fact I might put them all up on YouTube for even more free advertising. It depends on how you make money from these.

As for streaming, I would bactch convert them to Flash. Apart from the "evil empire" M$ stuff, Flash is a widely adopted format so your videos will play on Macs and PCs regardless of OS or browser. You can check to see if they are on your site and if not, you can send people to your site once the video has finished. Or pop under your site when the user presses "play".

It will be impossible to stop people from stealing your content, I do it all the time. You need to figure out a way to make money from people stealing your content. Let the thiefs become your biggest salesforce. It is a lot easier and profitable than trying to prevent it. Take a lesson from the record companies and movie studios.

[danimal]

pageone, if the video streams are being served up via mms, the end user can't tell where the actual wmv file is physically located on the server, so they can't link to it... and if you have hotlinking enabled on the server, they should not be able to use a link to the mms file either.

however, even after that, it's still pretty easy to copy the wmv file itself with the right software... the only true solution is to enable drm... microsoft has the best drm solution out there.

i would not worry about macs, only about 3% of the computers on the 'net are macs, so it's not a significant market share.