FLV Hotlinking Protection & File Management Help

[A.J. Angel]

Ok, I have just updated the player.swf and the swfobject.js file to the latest. I have also updated the embeddable code for the video.

I have done testing on my side and the hotlink protection is working under IE, Chrome and Opera. It doesn't work under Firefox or Safari as I was able to play them.

Originally Posted by Cleo

I just tried to play it in Safari and it didn't play. Are you sure you aren't loading from cache on your machine?

I cleared the cache and it is still the same for me.

Originally Posted by cd34

So, with that fixed, then it is on to protecting your content. Since the url is in the open, someone could do a view source and download the content directly. What you would need to do is write a short plugin to protect the url by encoding it in some manner, and allow the player to decode that to find the original URL. You'll stop the honest porn surfers from finding the source, but, anyone running livehttpheaders or any similar plugin will be able to see the source url as the browser must ultimately pull that content.

the .htaccess protection would work if you were providing a direct link to the content, but, someone could just cut and paste the url.

Do you mean a plug-in for the player or a plug-in for Firefox and Safari? I also suppose the number of surfers using livehttpheaders are low?

On the actual site, the path to the video is a relative path and not a URL.

Originally Posted by cd34

On the server side, you could switch to lighttpd which does handle FLV streaming, and use something like:

http://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects...BeforeDownload

which is a different method of protecting the content. You would set up the one directory as the trigger, and any request to access the protected content would be denied unless the trigger had been set. Of course, if they have viewed the site and set the trigger, they could easily view the source and download the content.

Unfortunately, I cannot use lighttpd so we must rule that option. On another hand, I also prefer using a method that I can understand and implement myself instead of relying on my webhost.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by A.J. Angel

I cleared the cache and it is still the same for me.

Are you using Safari on a Mac or PC? Not sure if it makes a difference but I'm on a Mac and the movie does not play.

I just tried it again after refreshing the page to be sure I had the latest.

I tried it just now in Mac Firefox and then movie does play so it seems that your hot linking doesn't work in Firefox but you already knew that.

[A.J. Angel]

Originally Posted by Cleo

Are you using Safari on a Mac or PC? Not sure if it makes a difference but I'm on a Mac and the movie does not play.

I just tried it again after refreshing the page to be sure I had the latest.

I tried it just now in Mac Firefox and then movie does play so it seems that your hot linking doesn't work in Firefox but you already knew that.

I am using Safari on a PC. I don't have a Mac. Hmm... it could be possible that it is a Safari/PC thing if the hotlink protection works for Safari/Mac.

Yes. I have tried Firefox and the hotlink protection doesn't work. As I understand, either Firefox doesn't pass a referrer either the flash player doesn't pass a referrer in Firefox.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by A.J. Angel

As I understand, either Firefox doesn't pass a referrer either the flash player doesn't pass a referrer in Firefox.

Sounds like the same issue that WMV files have which is why I don't use them.

I don't know if you are making your own FLVs or someone else is providing them but if you are making them you could do what I do and make them mp4 files instead of FLV and embed the mp4 in your Flash player. Like I did in this test page.

[A.J. Angel]

Originally Posted by Cleo

Sounds like the same issue that WMV files have which is why I don't use them.

I don't know if you are making your own FLVs or someone else is providing them but if you are making them you could do what I do and make them mp4 files instead of FLV and embed the mp4 in your Flash player. Like I did in this test page.

I actually tackled that idea. I tried to convert the trailer.flv into trailer.mp4 but although the conversion went without issues in Flash CS4, I could get to play it with Media Player Classic from K-Lite. I had converted it into NTSC High Quality or something like that. I shall have to give it a try again but more in-depth this time.