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Adobe White Paper: Video Content Protection with Flash Media Server

Posted At : July 3, 2007 8:52 AM | Posted By : Stefan Richter | Related Categories: FMS

Going hand in hand with the relaunch of the Adobe Developer Center comes a white paper by Kevin Towes, Technical Product Manager for Flash Media Server, describing video content protection measures using Flash Media Server (FMS).
The PDF document comes in at over 20 pages and it contains a lot of valuable info, both on the differences between progressive delivery and streaming as well as the methods that some technologies such as the latest RealPlayer deploy to grab FLV video files. The reader learns how the extensive scripting capabilities of FMS allow for a 'custom fit' security solution and even include a simple and ingenious way of preventing stream capturing through tools such as Replay Media Catcher.

Please do not be put off my the technical nature of this document and believe me when I say that most of the methods mentioned there are actually pretty simple to implement and deploy. Feel free to contact me with any questions or simply leave a comment below.

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Thanks Stefan! This is right on time. Our custom protection scripts do not work against stream capturing tools. I noticed going through our referral logs a while back that there were several instances of this happening and it has been on our list to find a solution. Much appreciated. I'll be exploring the new Developer Center for more gems like this.

Steve

# Posted By Steve | 7/3/07 7:41 PM

Sorry to post again, but there appears to be security protection on that pdf (ironic?)

I'll try and contact Adobe to see if they can fix it.

# Posted By Steve | 7/3/07 7:47 PM

Really, what kind of protection?

# Posted By Stefan | 7/3/07 7:49 PM

Acrobat says it cannot decrypt the document and Photoshop says security settings must be removed before the document can be opened.
???

# Posted By Steve | 7/3/07 7:56 PM

weird, no probs here. Did you try the latest version of Acrobat Reader?

# Posted By Stefan | 7/3/07 8:09 PM

Upgrade fixed it in Acrobat Reader. Silly me! Terribly sorry for the confusion.

Steve

# Posted By Steve | 7/3/07 8:46 PM

Adobe is very concerned about the protection of video content streamed to Flash. Please let me know if you have any questions or additions on this paper.
- Kev.

# Posted By Kevin Towes | 7/3/07 9:02 PM

Thanks for the commitment to stream protection Kevin.

Referrer and pageURL validation will help with our live streams. We have a domain validation script in the swf, but it doesn't seem to be working like we thought it was when we tested it.

We are running into 2 issues:

1. People stealing our SWFs

2. People capturing our SWFs and replaying them inside a Windows Media stream somehow. It's very weird because it's still in Flash format, all of our Flash controls still work... but it's displayed inside an embedded Windows Media video object with its own controls.

We need time to look at it in depth, but your paper will definitely help. I would post links, but I don't want to publicize these theifs. I can email examples to you if you're interested.

If I have questions, can I contact you?

Many thanks!
Steve

# Posted By Steve | 7/3/07 10:47 PM

Those are all live Flash streams I'm referring to, BTW. Those are the streams we are concerned about protecting (6 live TV streams and 7 live web cams)

We also have on-demand videos (progressive) but we aren't too concerned about protecting those videos. We actually encourage sharing as long as our player is used.

Sorry I hijacked this thread... I'll stop posting now. Email me if you would like more info: steve@tripsmarter.com

THANKS!

# Posted By Steve | 7/3/07 11:03 PM

I've not heard of this use case. Can you send me some futher information how to recreate it? ktowes@adobe.com.

# Posted By Kevin Towes | 7/3/07 11:54 PM

Looks like they're using a javascript function to extract an html file (the swf) and insert it into Windows Media.

The code looks like this:

<a class="m" href="javascript:listen('http://www.tripsmarter.com/destin/multimedia/tv.ht...','http://domainremoved.com/t1/b2258.asx',0)">150K</a></td><td class="q"><center><a href="javascript:bookmarksite('domainremoved.com - Beach TV','http://domainremoved.com/tv_channels/b2258.htm')">

I'll email you with links to the original and the stolen content.

Thanks,
Steve

# Posted By Steve | 7/4/07 4:38 AM

The title seems very interesting! I am implementing the same project - video conference project, and i think your paper good for my working

# Posted By Trinh Huu Ngan | 12/4/07 2:48 AM

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