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I use Cloudflare stream to deliver live HLS content. I need to use signed URLS/Tokens so that my stream cannot be used outside of my website. How do I do this? There is no option in the settings for cloudflare, only cloudfront, bunnyCDN, etc. This is for LIVE HLS streaming, therefore this needs to be tokens as the manifest url changes.
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Hello James,
currently Cloudflare Stream is not supported. I see here is their documentation on how to generate tokens for their videos: https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/securing-your-stream/ So it could be added.
In general we do not have a good experience with Cloudflare – mainly with their website caching which seems to always cause issues when people try to use it for their websites and they do not understand all the technology involved.
In our comparison it was also more expensive than other services: https://foliovision.com/2021/09/video-encoding-prices-cost However our comparison does not cover live streaming, so I wonder what is you experience.
Please let us know why did you pick Cloudflare Stream over other live streaming platforms such as Viloud or DaCast.
Thanks,
MartinI’ve had an awful time with AWS, way overcharging, too many services needed just to push out a stream. Vimeo is too unreliable and their customer service is crap. BunnyStream doesn’t do live streaming. Cloudflare is a great CDN and their video pricing is reasonably cheap.
Hi James,
Thanks for your answer. I’m no fan of AWS either. Vimeo is not unreliable, but are largely pay for bandwidth now too (the unlimited offer does not exist).
Cloudflare has a big game and that’s to privatise the internet AND to be able to spy on all our secrets. We are fundamentally opposed to Cloudflare’s goals but the Livestreaming looks to be a well-priced in comparison to other solutions.
We’d be willing to prioritise adding Cloudflare Stream support and set it personally up on your site for $200. Would this help?
I appreciate the offer, but I can implement it myself I just need to edit the plugin files, but I would much prefer it to be an existing feature in your settings. I disagree, Vimeo lately has been piss poor at best. They also missold me their product a while back. They promised “Unlimited streams” then when I was doing a boxing tournament that required 5 rings streaming simultaneously it wouldn’t work. I spoke with their support team and they said “oh its actually limited to 3 streams”, they very promptly updated their sales page to reflect this! Their player gives a constant “Stream Offline” error message even though its online. If more than a couple of hundred people are on your stream at once it also struggles tremendously poorly, this is just my experience. I think its good for entry level streaming, but as we need to scale on occasions it becomes useless
Hi James,
Thanks for sharing your poor Vimeo experience. If you are running five streams at the same time, yes you probably have to be on a metered account. We know of worse cases where simply VOD accounts using a reasonable amount of bandwidth were cancelled, against Vimeo’s terms of service.
If you would like to code an enhancement for Cloudflare yourself, please go ahead. If you share the code with us, we’d be happy to put it into FV Player Live Streaming.
Thanks, Alec
Hello James,
here’s our documentation on adding support for custom video CDNs with secure tokens on URLs: How to add your own URL token signing mechanism
It solves the biggest issue – these signed URLs time out and have to be regenerated – that keeps them secure.
Thanks,
Martin
