Fluent Player privacy
Hello everyone
I have a question about the Fluent Player. Is it correct that there is no way to protect the files from being downloaded? Anyone can view and download the files via the file URL, even without login credentials for the community. Is there something I might have overlooked?
If I can view the source, I can usually find the URL to an MP4 file and download it directly. To avoid that, you need encrypted streaming that doesn't reveal the source.
Okay, but I can also simply download the file by right-clicking on it. I want to prevent anyone from being able to download the videos and audio files. Video laden (Download video).
It's a player so it depends on your source. So if you use bunny stream and use their DRM then it will be hard to download the files. But please note, once a media is on internet anyone can download even if it's applied as DRM. That's how the whole piracy works. So I would not worry about if someone is downloading my media or not. Even youtube could not protect downloads. People always find way to download or even screen record it.
Shahjahan Jewel Yes, you are absolutely right, but when it comes to song files, for example .wav, then the person has the best quality of my file through direct download. That isn't possible on Spotify or Soundcloud. Even if I put the files in a private room in my community, the whole world can still access them. This isn't criticism because I am a big fan and active user of your software, but I personally miss this feature.
Stephanie Müller Instead of one big file, Spotify sends music in tiny, encrypted chunks. Without the app to stitch them together and the license key from your account, these chunks are just gibberish data.
Unlike a video you save to your Downloads folder, Spotify hides its data in cache folders with random names. Even if you find them, they won't have a .mp3 extension.
A .mp4 file on an open server is like a book lying on a table in a coffee shop. Most people will read it, only a few will steal it.
Stephanie Müller Here is the technical details. We could stream the video data when you store them on the server part by part. It's not rocket science. But It's really expensive for the server and when 100s of users watch the video, your server will melt and go down. That's why people use a video CDN service like Bunny Stream and that's why you should not stream a video from your own server. if you want to stream from your server then you have to use that type of server and that should not be built with PHP.
if any WP plugin says, they have this feature for self hosted videos, I can gurantee that, it will not scale even for 100 concurrent users.
William Beem I'm just thinking about what is better in the end: continuing to use YouTube and sharing the link in the community, or hosting the file myself. On YouTube, users have ads, which is annoying and often causes people not to watch a video to the end unless they pay €17.99 for the subscription.
Shahjahan Jewel Alright, that makes sense. Then I'll stick with YouTube and share the links. Thank you all very much.
Stephanie Müller Or you can use Bunny Stream for your course videos. But for user uploaded videos, we will also include bunny stream storage.
Shahjahan Jewel I understand that with most players, the download option depends on where the video is hosted, and the player simply uses the available source.
However, with Presto Player, it works differently. It has settings that prevent downloading even for YouTube videos.
Normall,y when you embed a YouTube video, the player shows the standard YouTube interface — buttons, suggested videos, links to YouTube, etc. But Presto Player overrides all of that and replaces it with its own clean player interface.
Because of that:
- There is no download option
- There are no YouTube buttons or suggested videos
- Users also cannot open the video on YouTube directly from the player
So it seems that it can be done. 😊
Armin Pajula Did you try FluentPlayer? FluentPlayer does the same thing + a lot more than any media player plugin in the entire WP ecosystem.
Armin Pajula FluentPayer does all of this too. They is no media player in the work right now that works as much as FluentPlayer does.
Justice Akorede and Shahjahan Jewel, I didn't try the Fluent Player myself; I just saw Stephanie Müller comment that there is a download option when you right-click.
I haven't used the Fluent Player myself yet, as the basic version does not save the playhead position where the user was left off last time. It's a Pro feature, and this feature is a crucial part on my website as some videos are up to 2 hours long. 😊
Another feature that seems to be missing is the remembering of the playback speed.
As I played around with the player after reading your comments, it seems that the brand color is not affecting the player 😊Can you confirm that?
But the main question about the privacy, the YouTube video is not downloadable with the right click. Yeah! Thank you! 🙏
Armin Pajula It’s worth knowing that the video’s YouTube URL is always just one click away in the browser’s developer tools, even when using Presto Player (or FluentPlayer).
Karl Emil Nikka Yeah, I'm aware of that. Luckily, over 90% of people don't know anything about that. 😆
Thank you for bringing it up. 🙏
If you use Bunny Mediacage DRM, you have basically something similar to Netflix. You cannot download the videos. If you try, it only records a black stream. You will need dedicated hardware do copy it. But I am not sure if FluentPlayer supports it, and I never tried it. I had one client who wanted it but went with regular Bunny private stream in the end. For most cases that is sufficient.