Password protected video

drmencryptionpasswordvideo

I want to protect my instructional video with a password. There is a use case.

When a user wants to play an encrypted file, the encrypted file will pop up a dialog box to request the user to enter a Playback Password. This dialog box will display the machine ID of the user's apple device. The user can send his/her own machine ID to you, and you can create a Playback Password based on the user's machine ID. After that the user can use this Playback Password to play your file on his/her device. Since the Playback Password is created based on the user's machine ID, the user will not be able to share the Playback Password with other users. Since the Playback Password is bond to the user's device, the user will not be able to re-distribute your files.

Is there some software that helps me to obtain this purpose?

I seem to have secured the streaming video from the web site well enough, but a lot of the members want video files because they don't want to have to deal with wi-fi to play the video while they conduct the class.

There is no doubt someone can just shoot the video from the screen, but I want to slow down the proliferation of my video.

Best Answer

The software you are looking for is called "Digital Rights Management" software, often abbreviated to "DRM".

Searching for this term will find a wide range of third party tools and solutions for protecting your videos. The offerings will range from massive companies like Adobe with their Access solution to numerous smaller companies.

Protecting Streamed/Online Content

Controlling access to a video file to be played on viewer's computer is a difficult problem. Your best option is to provide online only access to your video content. By serving the video content yourself, you can more easily control access.

Have you considered using YouTube and their paid channel service?

Protecting Local Content

There is currently no built-in DRM mechanism included with Mac OS X. Requiring a user to install a third party video codec is likely to limit your audience.

However, Flash remains a popular plug-in and can be used to provide digital rights management. Flash works both in the web browser and for stand alone applications.

Searching for flash protect local video returns software claiming to support multiple platforms, including Apple:

Protect Software

We protect your software, video and content effectively against illegal copies and sharing. On CD/DVD/BD, USB-Stick, in local networks or via the Internet - We have the best solution for copy protection.

Brightcove

Robust content protection across every screen is an essential part of any video monetization strategy. Brightcove helps you protect your content and your business model with the most advanced encryption and DRM technologies, as well as geographic, time-based and user-based restrictions, to prevent unauthorized access, downloads, and copying of your valuable content.

Multimedia OwnerGuard

Multimedia OwnerGuard is designed to support a wide range of Multimedia Files including (swf, flv, mp4, f4v, 3gp, avi, rm, mkv, 3gg, 3g2, mov, m4v, m4a, f4p, f4a, f4b, mp3, mpg, asf, wma, wmv, aac, ogg, aif, flac). Now you can use full features of OwnerGuard DRM Technology to protect and distribute your Flash SWF, FLV and many other media files while OwnerGuard protects your digital ownership rights.

SWF Protection

Encrypt and protect Flash SWF files from decompilers. Protect not only Actionscripts, but also all images, sounds, buttons and sprites resources in your SWF files.

Try a Flash Based Solution

Try one of the Flash based video protection programs returned by the search above; I have no experience with any, so will not directly recommend one. The list above is extracted from the first page of Google results.

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