FLV Hotlinking Protection & File Management Help
 

Hey everyone,

I would like to ask for help on two things, especially to those who own tube sites and those who have video galleries.

The first one being if you guys know of a simple and effective way to protect myself from leechers hotlinking my FLV files to avoid bandwidth issues. Please note that I'm not a geek so I'm looking something easy to understand and implement.

The second being, if there is a recommended way to sort the FLV files. I have seen some sites having their FLV in the same directory as their gallery or on a dedicated directory or subdomain for FLV files.

For the moment I only have around 150 videos with around 20-25 being more than 10Mb. Most of them are trailers but there are quite a few that are samples taken from FHG. Among them, about 50-75 are hosted FLV files offered by sponsors.

I would highly appreciate any pointers and directions on what to do and how to do. :)

Contact me. I have solutions for all of your listed problems.

I have added and sent you a message on Icq.

got your ICQ invite. you can also send an email to [email protected] and we can work out how to fix all of your problems. the solutions are simple, but will depend on your setup.

1. Use lighttpd + mod_flv_streaming + mod_secdownload
2. Set the mod_secdownload root correctly, and the lighttpd doctoot to a different folder.
3. If you also use apache on the same server (use .htacces to block direct access to the files).

if you host your own FLV then why just not adding a waterwmark, i am doing everything for my tube videos being shared...

I worked with A.J. Angel and we got the server setup so that the images and flv's cannot be hot linked.

After some further testing, I realized that although it works in most browsers, it doesn't work in Firefox or Safari. :(

What method are you using to prevent hotlinking?

Htaccess. It works for all browsers with the exception of Firefox and Safari.

The code won't stop someone from downloading the images, it just stops someone from hotlinking, meaning to paste the url to your photo on their website and let you pay for the bandwidth.

To stop right clicks and Save As...you have to move things to a Flash gallery and then encrypt the flash file so that the resources cannot be extracted.