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Hello,
I intend to buy FV Player Pro for working on self-hosted videos. I’m particularly interested in video quality switching.
I have checked out the documentation [here https://foliovision.com/player/basic-setup/quality-switching ] but I’m wondering if the approach to quality switching could be made simple.
As such, I do have the following questions.
1. For example, what happens if the videos in question are not on the same directory nor have an almost similar URL?
I can host the videos on a different video hosting platform. However, each MP4 file will have a unique URL.
In some players that support Quality Switching, they do have slots where you can enter and label videos of different quality when setting up a video.
Therefore, you can have unique video URLs hosted on different platforms and collate them to the player for quality switching.
For example, take a look at the Multi-Resolutions feature of a video player that I’m using.
2. Is it possible to encrypt URLs to prevent people from skimming through your website’s source code to extract the MP4 links and horde your server’s resources?
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Hello Deewin,
Thanks for reaching to us!
To enable quality switching your videos need to be on the same URL as the guide that you’ve mentioned says.
I can discuss our possibilities regarding this feature with our development team.
Also, quality switching on FV Player works automatically without any flaws with different hosting options like Vimeo or AWS(HLS in general). We also strongly recommend to use AWS if you want to secure your video with encryption. AWS allows you to host, stream and encrypt your videos within one roof.
Although setting up AWS services can seem quite complicated we offer really detailed documentation for our users.
Let us know what do you think!
Thanks,
JurajThanks,
Juraj
Hello,
Thanks for your response. The problem with Amazon Web Services is that it’s too expensive for video streaming. There are free hosting sites for videos and that come in handy.
Also, I can opt to host videos on my servers. There are cheaper hosting services out there for video streaming too. The challenge is the lack of a video link encryption feature can lead to spammers or people stealing content to skim through the MP4 links and end up stealing your bandwidth.
Hopefully, the quality switching feature and video source encryption feature can be added in the future. This plugin is great. Still setting up my site and I’ll buy it before the end of the month.
Helllo Deewin,
I see that we could improve the quality switching to work the way you described. We already have multiple slots for different video sources, so we could make it work if each quality would match on of these quality prefixes, like -hd, -sd or -mobile. Making it totally independent would be a bigger project.
However a HLS stream is a much more robust way of streaming video and currently we are mostly working on allowing a simple workflow for video posting which will include real stream encryption.
The obsfucation of video URLs in the source code could work, it would be a handy feature. These URLs would still have to be decoded somewhere, but even if it happens in JavaScript it would make it so much harder to just parse the HTML for the video links.
What I would recommend instead of that would be to restrict the referrers on your video hosting servers. That way you can block anybody who might try to hotlink your video.
Thanks,
Martin
Hello Martin,
Yes, you have captured the idea well. Actually, it’s not necessary to build the feature separately. As you say, the slots when creating new videos can serve that purpose.
That’s what I thought it’s the function of those slots in the first place. If you can adjust that to work that way, then it will be a great. HLS streams are great.
But for small publishers, developing or renting HLS servers is not cost-effective for a start. We have free video hosting platforms that can enable one to grab the MP4 links and use them.
Hello Martin,
If I upgrade to FV Player Pro, how long will it take to implement video quality switching based on your suggeted approach?
Hello Deewin,
we could make it so that you would input the sources like this:
https://my-streaming-server-1.com/course-1/lessons-1-hd.mp4
https://my-streaming-server-2.com/course-1/lessons-1-sd.mp4
https://my-streaming-server-3.com/course-1/lessons-1-mobile.mp4And then FV Player Pro would know how to offer these different files as different video qualities. While currently if you enter
https://my-streaming-server-1.com/course-1/lessons-1-hd.mp4
And enable Quality Switching, it expects to find:
https://my-streaming-server-1.com/course-1/lessons-1-sd.mp4
https://my-streaming-server-1.com/course-1/lessons-1-mobile.mp4It’s possible to improve this, but it adds a fair amount of complexity to our code.
The solution which I would recommend for you is that if you have to use different servers for video streaming, then keep all the video qualities on that same server.
Also, perhaps you can find a free tool to encode video into HLS streams. FFmpeg can do that for you for sure, but it’s a command line which not everybody can use (while others prefer it). You can host a HLS stream anywhere you like, you don’t need any special server or CDN for it. And on top of that you would be able to get quality switching with that even in the free FV Player.
Thanks,
Martin
Hello,
The first solution is great. The reason why this feature is great is because, the current quality switching requires files to be on the same directory and server and that is something I’d want to avoid at all costs.
Also, the advantage of using different servers available for free makes it easy for me to benefit from free bandwidth. However, these free servers limit you from creating directories.
I would have gone with HLS M3U8 but it’s a complex process, which I need to take time and learn and may be implement later at a later date. Therefore, having the first integration that you’ve described is great.
By having such an integration, I can load the MP4 links from different servers; hence, reduce the risk of being banned for taking advantage of such services.
Besides, it also makes it easy to reduce server loads. For example, I can have three different servers running on three different domains/subdomains to serve different video qualities just in case my bandwidth requirements exceeds the free video hosting services.
For example, Server 1 can be for hosting MOBILE QUALITY, Server 2 for SD quality, and Server 3 for HD quality.
If it can happen sooner then I’ll be so happy to upgrade and wait.
By the way, if you can suggest easy Windows tools that I can use to create HLS streams, I’ll be glad to try it out. Otherwise, implementing it on the server side is technical for me at the moment.
Hello Deewin,
I will have to check your feature request with Alec. Yesterday I could imagine this as an useful addition, but now it seems to me it will just make FV Player code more complex, while we are working on improving the workflow for HLS encoding, which makes this quality switching feature less interesting.
We could do it as a custom programming job for your website, but we would have to guareantee it will keep working, so it’s really not that easy.
Thanks,
Martin
Hello Martin,
Thanks for your dedication. I have managed to sit down checked out how to create HLS streams and after trial and error in the past few hours, I have managed to nail it. I think I will use it. Let me continue refining it for now until I master how to use the feature effectively. Thank you so much.
Hello Deewin,
please let us know how are you creating these HLS streams if you have a moment. I only found some tutorials which used the command line ffmpeg: https://docs.peer5.com/guides/production-ready-hls-vod/
Thanks,
Martin
Hello,
There’s a video converter called Pavtube. It does the conversion and all I do is uploaded the videos to my sever. Checked the HLS streams using validation tools and zero errors showed up.
I have managed to stream the HLS streams perfectly using FV Player. Currently, I working on how to make the streams available in the public. My server is blocking all requests for the HLS streams despite enabling CORS.
