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I am embedding a video feature on my website, and I am planning to use HTML5 player to play those videos.

2 questions: 1. Which formats should I encode the uploaded videos to (I need mobile support + PC + mac). 2. How can I prevent people from downloading the movie (HTML5 plays directly from my CDN, hence the link can be fetched easily)

Can CDN protect the content by issuing an access token that will expire in X time?

Thanks all!

Himberjack
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  • You can't prevent people from downloading the movie. You can make it more inconvenient, but you can't prevent it completely. – JJJ Dec 28 '11 at 14:07

4 Answers4

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1) If you need to support also Firefox 3.6 you will need to ensure at least 3 formats: mp4, webm and ogv. Otherwise mp4 and webm are enough. mp4 is loaded by the apple mobile devices (ipad, iphone), Safari and it can be loaded by a flash player (supposing you have installed flash player plugin 9r3 as a minimum version). webm is supported by firefox and chrome

http://diveintohtml5.info/video.html#what-works

2) take a look at How to prevent downloading HTML5 videos

Community
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Fabrizio Calderan
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First, Zencoder has a fantastic page on HTML5 video encoding recommendations:

  1. The minimum for HTML5 video is MP4 + WebM or Ogg (or both), using the MP4 version for Flash fallback.

  2. For mobile support, one H.264/MP4 output can take you a long way. 2-3 enables better quality and wider compatibility.

Second, at the moment, your videos will be downloadable with minimal effort (e.g., View Source). See the related question, "Is there a way to use DRM on HTML5 video?"

Community
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a paid nerd
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The HTML5 specification allows for any video format.It is the browser implementation that determines what formats are actually supported.

MP4 container with H.264 Video and AAC Audio

MP4/H.264 is supported by Safari and IE9+. You may find support in some versions of Chrome.

WebM container with VP8 Video and Vorbis Audio

WebM/VP8 is supported by Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

Ogg container with Theora Video and Vorbis Audio

Ogg/Theora is supported by Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

Bottom-Line

Use more than one format to be assured your client doesn't see blank frame.

As far as the Content Protection, I am bit short on that knowledge and also suppose that it doesn't make sense to go after this issue when your user might be running a slow connection

Pankaj Upadhyay
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For content protection. seems like, today there is no straight forward way to do this. However, there is an active interest inside HTML5 camp where some form of DRM can be applied for this.

See this: http://gigaom.com/video/mdialog-tackles-html5-video-security/

Dipan Mehta
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