wowza based video selling with s2 integration

Hi all,

I hope it is ok to post this given that I am just trying to answer some queries I have read lately about people trying to protect videos and looking for wowza support with s2member. I am in the process of launching a video hosting/streaming service for people wanting to sell videos directly on thier website (i.e. not through a website which sells the videos for you). Without going into the details, this is acheived through a REST based API which allows for communication back to a main server for pulling details about videos as well as user authentication for access.

For WordPress users, I have wrote a plugin which integrates with s2member and it’s buy now buttons for the payment processing of purchasing videos. To see a website currently using this setup, checkout this martial arts site. Non logged in users and users who have not purchased a video will be shown a trailer of the video, users who have purchased will be shown the full video. You can view the source code to see how secure the implementation is and that you cannot view the full video without a secure token authenticating you (and these tokens expire). Anyway, I’m not going to get into the full implementation details unless someone wants to know more, just ask any particular questions and I’ll answer them.

You can actually login as username demo, password demo on that website and go to “My Purchased Videos” in the top menu to see an example of viewing purchased full videos.

Anyway, I am just posting this for who may find it more useful to outsource this functionality rather than spending the time and money to develop this functionality with wowza. Once the service launches, prices will start at $10/month.

Again, I hope I am not overstepping a line posting this as this can sit along side s2member and utilise the great payment processing that it provides.

Gavin

Hello, nice

Your implementation is pretty good but not 100% secure.

rtmpe://96.8.126.73/hss/mp4:c236795e954e8d7120ec8c502fe123dc_t273_1024.mp4?privatetoken=&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.urbansilat.com

File name:View Video.flv

RMTPE is OK, but there are dozens of software that can bypass it.

Download speed is about 150KB/s. It took .12 seconds to download your demo 1.84MB file.

I think you should allow a download option for something like the training site. Some people might want to take that video when they travel. Like in a hotel training room or so

Sam

Hi Sam,

Thanks for having a look, and yes absolutely someone with the right know how can download any stream, but rtmpe is best practice at this time, but if there is a fully secure streaming protocol out there I would be interested to know. The main point is though that without purchasing the video, all you can dowload is the trailer which is not a problem as this is the only stream you can access, and this is a totally different file from the full video. The full video stream will never play (even if you know the url) without a valid authenticated token, so it can only be ripped by someone who actually has access to it.

The seller can choose as to whether to allow downloads of the video to paying customers, just like they can put a time limit, bandwidth cap, bitrate playback limit, and even what bitrate version is allowed be downloaded.

I don’t think you can make any stream 100% secure once someone can play it, there is software like you have used as well as screen grabbing software, or even someone recording from an output signal to the likes of a dvd recorder. I think all you can do is secure access to the full video stream, and use best practises to deliver that securely so the majority of people would have difficulty ripping it (assuming you dont just let them download a copy).

Gavin