Streaming Video - Secure

[SPG]

Hi,

Two questions for you all..

Firstly, is there a way of streaming video using PHP? At the moment I just
have a link to a video file and the whole thing downloads before playing
which is a bit of a chore as the video file is pretty huge.

Secondly, I want to restrict access to the video using a password. Can
anyone think of a nice way of doing this? I thought about having the video
embedded into a page and when the page loads it checks if a user is logged
in and if not goes back to the login page, but that doesn't restict access
to the actual video, IE: They can view source, find the Video link and
simply copy it into a browser window...

I look forward to your answers/advice

Steve

[bsa]

Steve,
PHP or not you should try VideoVista http://www.vista.it.

It plays virtually on any webserver regardless script language or
dedicated server.
Anyway using PHP you can achieve good user interaction with it.
Hope this could help you.

regards

Fabio


On Feb 22, 2:38 pm, "SPG" <steve.goods... @nospoo.blueyon der.co.uk>
wrote:

Hi,

Two questions for you all..

Firstly, is there a way ofstreamingvide ousing PHP? At the moment I just
have a link to avideofile and the whole thing downloads before playing
which is a bit of a chore as thevideofile is pretty huge.

Secondly, I want to restrict access to thevideousing a password. Can
anyone think of a nice way of doing this? I thought about having thevideo
embedded into a page and when the page loads it checks if a user is logged
in and if not goes back to the login page, but that doesn't restict access
to the actualvideo, IE: They can view source, find theVideolink and
simply copy it into a browser window...

I look forward to your answers/advice

Steve

[Gary Hasler]

SPG wrote:

>
Hi,

Two questions for you all..

Firstly, is there a way of streaming video using PHP? At the moment I just
have a link to a video file and the whole thing downloads before playing
which is a bit of a chore as the video file is pretty huge.

Secondly, I want to restrict access to the video using a password. Can
anyone think of a nice way of doing this? I thought about having the video
embedded into a page and when the page loads it checks if a user is logged
in and if not goes back to the login page, but that doesn't restict access
to the actual video, IE: They can view source, find the Video link and
simply copy it into a browser window...

Aside from PHP and the password issue, with most video types like .wmv,
..ram, etc, you can achieve a sort of pseudo-streaming effect without
having to go to a true streaming server by setting your mime and file
types properly so the web browser immediately passes the url off to the
video player app rather than trying to download the file. (For example,
with Realvideo types you can create a meta-file which only contains the
url of the actual video; so the browser downloads the (tiny) metafile
and gives it to Realplayer which then "streams" the actual video.)

There's also other media types which handle their own internal
streaming, like Flash.