[thelist] Amazon S3 for serving video: restricting permissions

[Mohan Arun L]

>> Dude, life's too short -- why don't you lease a server from someplace > like RackSpace and, if you're not inclined, put someone on retainer to handle installing/maintaining PHP, etc.?
> >
>>money. I don't have the funds, today, to start paying 5-10 times >>what I'm paying now.

have a look at
http://www.minivds.com/products/unlim.html
 - VDS/VPS at prices so low I havent seen elsewhere the same price
quoted. (I am not affiliated with them)

I saw in another forum that you can use
ustream.tv
to host your videos - they allow password-protecting videos (I believe
it hosting is free but I am not sure about length limitation) - in
that case you would just hire a virtual assistant to create accounts
for your subscribers at ustream.tv when somebody signs up at your
site. Your flow would be something like this
User signs up at your site -> your virtual assistant gets notified via
email/IM -> create account at ustream.tv -> send username/password of
ustream to subscriber.
"Ustream allows you to password-protect your streams, so you can
provide a simple password to users you wish to invite."
http://www.auctioneertech.com/ustream-provides-easy-free-live-video-streaming-on-any-website/
"You can password protect your Live Streaming video page and then give
access to certain individuals limiting access to the public."
http://sitesires.com/live-video-streaming/

I believe vimeo also allows you to password protect your uploaded videos.
http://www.vimeo.com/forums/topic:7442
"Make video private for only contacts & password-protect for thos"


By using ustream or vimeo, you can satisfy your this requirement: "I
don't want to risk the possibility of uncontrolled ad hoc bandwidth
charges from Amazon.  I want to know that someone watching the video
is a paying member, which offsets my costs."- because bandwidth is
from vimeo and ustream - and you wont even have to pay for s3. I am
not sure if vimeo or ustream have a length limit, but I guess you
could work out a premium plan with their support, and the cost would
probably be lesser than spending time coding to password protect
videos on s3.

"Vimeo does not have a limitation on duration, but has a weekly limit
on upload size (500 MB)."
http://www.n252q.com/2008/08/vimeo-versus-youtube.html

Or you could use this simple one liner php script to protect the php
pages that allows members to view videos
http://www.zubrag.com/scripts/password-protect.php

Of course, anybody watching a S3/ustream.tv/vimeo video could also
screencast the video and bootleg, if they really wanted to.

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MohanArun.com