Protected video hosting?

Hi - I want to use my app to play online video content (such as lessons).
However, this is only for my users who have bought my software.
Is there a way to use Htmlviewer to stream videos that are only accessable via my site?

Is there a video hosting service that will let this happen?
Is it free (like youtube)?
Cheers

Most CDN networks can offer this. CDN’s offer geo-redundancy so people download the videos from a server closest to them. They also use optimized servers for streaming video chunks, compressing feeds, etc. Generally the authentication part is a token, secret, access key, or equivalent you pass along with the request to get the video.

A DIY solution wouldn’t be so hard either really. Biggest issue is bandwidth and video storage.

I’ve got unlimited bandwidth on my storage - I even thought of adding a video as a blob to my database - has anybody done this a lived to talk about it?

I’ll check out a search on CDN networks - thanks Phillip!

Its hard to suggest a strategy without knowing more information. The size of the videos, the codec used (varied compression), the principal audience size, geography, how will it be consumed (html5/flash/silverlight), etc.

I’d start with a quality video hosting service with CDN-like or full CDN capabilities and go from there.

well, you could simply have some credential send in the URL for the video access which you can verify on the server before starting streaming of video.

Be careful many hosting companies claim to offer unlimited bandwidth but once you start using it they throttle it down significantly so your pipe speed is very slow. That prevents you from actually using a lot of bandwidth.

Which company are you with and how much are they charging?

[quote]
I even thought of adding a video as a blob to my database - has anybody done this a lived to talk about it? [/quote]

You should not add large files directly to your database. That’s very bad and will slow it down and make the database huge.
A better approach is to store the file paths of the large files in the database and store the actual large files elsewhere.

I’m using webhosting.net - they’ve got great support!

I actually had signed up with ipage - until I found out that they do not allow apps to connect remotely to a user’s database!
How useless is that!

[quote]
I actually had signed up with ipage - until I found out that they do not allow apps to connect remotely to a user’s database!
How useless is that! [/quote]

Normally you don’t want your database to be directly accessible by the web/net.

You are supposed to use a language like php to act like a bridge to access the database and not have the database exposed directly. It’s a security measure.

You could write a xojo app which connects directly to the database on your server and your users can connect directly to your xojo app.

well, there’s there’s password and username - It can be accessed thru PHPadmin… I also access it from my desktop app.
I don’t have the Pro version of Xojo - only the professional… maybe next time I come to renew, I’ll get just the database and desktop and web - I would never, ever use console.

I wonder if I can host a .mov movie on my site and have it accessed by movie player on my desktop app?

I have unlimited bandwidth and storage on my hosting server and this is a way I could play protected video without having to fork out to a company like vimeo pro or others?

Any advise here or anybody using this method?
Cheers,
Sean

[quote=50458:@Sean Clancy]I wonder if I can host a .mov movie on my site and have it accessed by movie player on my desktop app?

I have unlimited bandwidth and storage on my hosting server and this is a way I could play protected video without having to fork out to a company like vimeo pro or others?

Any advise here or anybody using this method?
Cheers,
Sean[/quote]

I’m always nervous of “unlimited bandwidth” as that may be covered by an acceptable use policy that may get iffy on streaming media, etc. The streaming will then be http as opposed to any streaming protocols and “rate shaping” depending on throughput etc. Do-able tho’

well, the movies are not so long - maybe 10 minutes or so. They are instructional videos for my licensed user on how to play guitar/bass. I’m more interested in advise that relates to playing hosted material through the movie player rather than discussing the pros and cons of unlimited bandwidth servers

I can’t see why this would not work

You might want to have some means to protect them on your server so people can’t just sniff the connection & see where its going the just open that URL in a web browser

Or you might want to let people do this to have a way to scope out your software without buying it

Just something to consider

thanks for the reply - I’ve got the movieplayer on a window on my app. The goal is that the movie would play in the movie player - I can’t imagine how anybody would be able to trace back the movie url if it’s done via code!
Could you define sniffing?
Also, the format of the movies wll be in mp4. Would it better to do it with .mov?
Any Advice is wonderful!

[quote=50465:@Sean Clancy]thanks for the reply - I’ve got the movieplayer on a window on my app. The goal is that the movie would play in the movie player - I can’t imagine how anybody would be able to trace back the movie url if it’s done via code!
[/quote]
A tool like little snitch can watch ALL internet access & will ask you if you want to allow the access
So when your app tries to go get the movie to play it a user could see where the video is coming from

You might want to consider mp4 for OS X & linux and mov for Windows
But I’m not certain that will make that big a difference

Can little snitch see the exact url?

It can see most anything when it requires network traffic from a machine.
And if it can’t a packet sniffer definitely can as it just grabs TCP packets & you can use lots of tools to analyze those.

oh - so when I contact a remote database, is that going to be a problem?

Yes. It is a security vulnerability, which is why many hosting providers do not allow it. The preferred solution is to write some PHP scripts that act as an intermediary and access them through HTTPS. The upside is you can implement whatever security token scheme you want in order to ensure that only your app is able to access the data.

I’m using webservices when somebody wants to activate their computer. However, my app does read and write to the database quite frequently - so that could be a problem :frowning: