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Protecting Videos

There are many ways in which you can protect videos.

Case 1: The video file is stored on your web site

By default, DAP can only protect files that are stored on the same web site where DAP is installed.

So if you install DAP on YourSite.com , then your files must also be located on YourSite.com. DAP installed on YourSite.com cannot protect files (.mp4, .mp3, .html, .pdf, .doc) that are stored on AnotherSite.com.

So assuming the files are stored on the same site as DAP, you can (and should) protect both the actual video file, as well as the blog post or page in which the embed-code for your video is published, by adding both to a Product.

This gives you 2 levels of protection for your videos:

Level 1: The blog post or page containing the video player code, itself is accessible only by authorized members.
Level 2: When an authorized user gets legitimate access to the page where the video is published (because they’re a paying member, say), even if they try to do a view source and figure out the location of the video (eg., http://yoursite.com/videos/howtovideo1.mp4) , and pass it around by email to their friends (or post the link in an online forum), their friends still can’t view the video, because the video link itself is protected by DAP.

If you have some text that you want the casual visitor (and Google) to read, but wish to protect only the video, then you could turn Sneak-Peek on (in Setup > Config > Advanced), insert a WordPress more tag (<!–more–>) into your post just where you want the content to start being protected, and put the video player’s embed code after the more tag.

Case 2: Video file is stored on Amazon S3

The only 3rd-party-stored video files that DAP can protect at this time are videos (and other files) that are stored on Amazon S3. DAP cannot do this by itself, but uses a special WordPress plugin called S3MediaVault.com , which is a plugin we developed specifically to make Amazon S3 videos play in your WordPress blog posts/pages. So again you get 2 levels of protection for your videos…

Level 1: DAP protects the post/page where the special S3MV video player code is embedded
Level 2: The S3MediaVault plugin makes sure that even if someone tried to do a view source and figure out the actual link to your Amazon S3 video, they still won’t be able to view the video.

WARNING: Video stored on other 3rd party video sites

DAP cannot protect, say, videos that are embedded from other 3rd party web sites like YouTube or Hulu. Of course, DAP can always protect the blog post or page itself that contains the video, but once an authorized user gets valid access to that blog page, they can see that it is a YouTube video (say), and then pass that YouTube video link to their friends, in which case DAP cannot protect that external YouTube video link.

Check out my podcast episode at http://subscribeme.fm/video-hosting-for-your-membership-site/ which goes into detail about video hosting for your membership site.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 21 comments
Lucas Starbuck - July 16, 2010

Using the sneak peek – is there any way to make DAP hide more content than only what’s in the post? We have a video player in our template, that reads in a video, but want to protect it in the page also.
alternatively, do you know of a way to inject more content in {the_content} when it comes back in the loop, so that it appears to DAP that the video player is part of the {More…} content?
thanks.

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Adam - December 29, 2010

I use Easy Video Player 2.0 (kind of based on JW tech.) which I store on AS3. Will you support it?
EVP itself have already 2 security built in
1. can set to play only from specific URL
2. random link change so it cannot be leeched

However, it can be still viewable everywhere and I want only members to see it.

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Veena Prashanth - December 29, 2010

Yes, DAP supports EVP.

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Adam - December 30, 2010

WOW! That was fast reply.

Thank You Veena 🙂 I very appreciate it

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Kirk Ward - December 15, 2011

Can DAP protect content shown in an iFrame? Possibly hide the entire iFrame inside a [DAP] shortcode?

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Kirk Ward - December 15, 2011

Just answered my question by testing (silly me), but something broke my wordpress after the iframe was made available and I now have no shidebar. I’ll continue to cogitate, but step one looks good.

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Kirk Ward - December 15, 2011

Helps if you put the closing tag behind the iFrame opeing tag. DAP shortcodes protect the content like a charm.

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Alexei - January 11, 2012

Hi, What if I have several buckets in s3? Or I should keep all my videos in one bucket ?

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Ravi Jayagopal - January 11, 2012

Alexei,

For now, you will have to keep everything in one bucket. But you can create sub-folders within each bucket, and add the sub-folder name to the S3MV tag, like this:

[s3mv]subfolder1/filename.mp4,…[/s3mv]

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Johnny - January 28, 2012

I installed the S3mediavault. Is there anyway I can change the URL expiration time to something less than 15 minutes?

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david - April 22, 2012

could you look into protecting video files from WISTIA? They may have an API do do this. Several major IM marketers have moved there recently. I will also be moving there from Amazon S3.

http://wistia.com/product/private_video_sharing

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Alexei - April 26, 2012

$ 23 / MONTH
for 5 Videos?

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Sean - May 18, 2012

Wistia is expensive, but gives you considerable functionality – viewer heatmaps, viewer tagging and tracking, calls to action where the person clicks on the video, email capture in the video, etc…

Worth it when your business is email and video marketing.

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jj - June 4, 2012

what about Secure HTTP for iOS?

none of your stuff works for iOS right?

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Ravi Jayagopal - June 6, 2012

JJ,

DAP itself will work fine on iOS and https, if the videos are self-hosted on your own server.

But if you’re referring to our S3MediaVault plugin, then S3MV doesn’t play videos on iOS at this time, though that feature is coming soon.

UPDATE on 04/28/2016: The newer versions of S3MediaVault is fully mobile responsive and will play on all devices, universally, whether it is desktop or mobile, on iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, etc. See http://WickedCoolPlugins.com/doc/s3mediavault-pro-installation/

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Boki - June 20, 2013

Can paid users save/download video to their hard drive? Does your app. protect videos against screen recording?

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Ravi Jayagopal - June 21, 2013

Hi @Boki,

>>Can paid users save/download video to their hard drive?< < Yes. >>Does your app. protect videos against screen recording?<< Sorry, no.

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Nicholas Bugeja - April 28, 2016

Hi,

I was going to embed my Vimeo videos on my website and protect the pages. Is there any other way to make sure that the videos are also private and cannot be shared?

Thanks

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Ravi Jayagopal - April 29, 2016

Hi Nicholas,

Yes, you can embed Vimeo videos and then protect the pages using DAP. If you have a Vimeo Pro account, you can whitelist your domain, so that those videos play only from your web site. So Vimeo + DAP will be really secure. You can also host your videos on Amazon S3, and then use our plugin S3MediaVault (see http://WickedCoolPlugins.com/doc/s3mediavault-pro-installation/) to fully secure your videos.

Check out my podcast episode at http://subscribeme.fm/video-hosting-for-your-membership-site/ which goes into detail about video hosting for your membership site.

– Ravi Jayagopal

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IVAN - April 22, 2020

can I use VIMEO to protect my videos? works well vimeo WITH DAP

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Veena Prashanth - April 22, 2020

Hi Ivan:
While we recommend Amazon S3 with our S3MediaVault.com plugin for video content, you can embed vimeo videos on your WP pages and protect it using DAP.
-Veena

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