Video Hotlink Prevention?

In order for your visitors to watch the video, it HAS to be downloaded to their machines. It will be stored in the temp internet file folders so they can watch it. There’s no other way to handle online output really.

the only other way is to create a streaming video – you can also try using any anti-leech/hotlink feature in your Cpanel or relevant interface from your host.

Even through streaming the files need to be cached to your hdd before they can be viewed. There are a variety of ways to protect media files, but it’s all rather long winded and complicated.

The cpanel thing WILL prevent hotlinking, yes, but won’t prevent downloads to the temp files. There’s really not an effective way to prevent a truly determined thief from getting your stuff.

well I have Plesk not CPanel. What I meant by not downloading was the visitors and hotlinking sites should not be able download with “save target as”. Its ok for me as long as they stay on the site.

Well, even a right click script won’t stop a dedicated “save target as” thief.

You can find “no right click scripts” on sites like Hotscripts.

I think your best solution is flash. There are ways around everything but flash would be my tool.

you can still grab flash – if it is something that really bothers you, push out a lower res version of your file

you can always fool no right click scripts, and flash. THe only way is htaccess and when I use it, I cant display the video on my site.

This is the problem with Hotlink protection, it does not fair well with proxy users and the like. Perhaps your best option is to give up trying to prevent download but instead applying some copyright or other text notice within the video itself? Such as a line of text referring to your website at the top or bottom of the video screen.

At the end of the day, you could come up with some fantastic way of preventing download, but then again there is software which will copy any animation running on a desktop by way of screen capture. There is just no completely effective way of doing it.

Is there ne way to do it with PHP?

No, there isn’t.
CaptKitty’s last sentence above nails it.

Many music co’s are now streaming vids and such in the hope that it will prevent people downloading and distributing them.
It doesn’t.

You may stop the clueless, but if someone wants it, they will get it.