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I just purchased the FV Player Pro and FV Player Vimeo Security Add-on. The add-on stopped the browser extensions in Chrome, Firefox, and Explorer from downloading the video. This was great news!
However, when I went and tried my desktop based video downloader named “4K Video Downloader” it accessed the file and downloaded it very quickly. This was even more surprising because I originally just embedded Vimeo into my website without the use of FV and 4K Video Downloader could not download it. As soon as I started using FV it was able to download the video.
I have both security features on (Enhance security and Alternative Referer) as well as the corresponding security features on Vimeo.
What can be done to prevent this?
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Hello Luke,
thank you for the report!
Please let us know which 4K Video Downloader do you mean. There is no such extension on Chrome store. I only found a desktop application which I installed along with some good antivirus and I was not able to download a video that way. It only had a field to “Paste Link” which wouldn’t work with the website I was testing on.
If that’s the plugin, then please let us know what you are pasting in and if you put set the custom referer as recommended in FV Player Vimeo Security guide.
Thanks,
Martin
Thanks for getting back to me Martin!
It’s not an extension for a browser. It’s a stand alone application for your computer.
Here is a link to it’s website:
https://www.4kdownload.com/howto/howto-download-youtube-video?source=videodownloader
I did set the custom referrer and corresponded that to the only site the Vimeo video could be accessed from. However, I couldn’t verify whether I did this correctly? Maybe I missed something simple while doing that.
Hello Luke,
that’s the same 4K Video Downloader which I used.
What do you enter into that downloader to let it download the video?
Please check what happens when you open one of your videos using link like https://vimeo.com/524438701 in a browser incognito window. If you set the alternative referrer properly it should not open – hence 4K Video Downloader would not be able to open it either and it would be impossible to guess the proper referrer.
I also didn’t post a link for the FV Player Vimeo Security guide the last time so here it is: https://foliovision.com/player/securing-your-video/secure-videos-security
Thanks,
Martin
Okay, so the Vimeo video will not open in the incognito browser. So that looks right.
All I do is copy and paste the URL of the page the video is on, on my website.
(URL redacted)
I attached some photos that will hopefully give you a little insight on what’s going on over here.
I again was able to download the video with 4K Video Downloader just now.
Hello Luke,
I will investigate this further. It worked for me too.
Thanks,
Martin
Thanks Martin!
Hello Luke,
when I try to use the application with our website I just get the message: “This site is unsupported.” Is it possible that your website is on a list of supported websites by the application?
I checked the web server access logs and I do not see anything that would identify the application, like an user agent string. It juse uses a generic Google Chrome user agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/33.0.1750.117 Safari/537.36
Could you please try to use it with a URL like (URL redacted) and then check your web server access logs to see if it’s accessing your website in any special way? Does it use that same Google Chrome user agent string?
The above does require some server admin skills, if you are not sure about it, would it be possible to get WordPress admin login for your website to let us have a look?
Or I can try one more trick which should improve the video protection further.
Thanks,
Martin
I don’t think the application is on a supported list because earlier when I just had Vimeo embedded into the website it gave me the same error message it gave you about it being an unsupported website.
It was able to download the url you posted. And yes I can get you access to WP admin because I’m way out of my league with this technical stuff. What’s a secure way of doing that? Or we can try your one other trick.
Hello Luke,
could you please put a different video on that page and verify that it plays in a browser where you are not logged in? Then see if that application will be able to download it.
I tried to copy your page HTML and host it on a test domain and even though I replaced the Vimeo URL with something else it would still download what you have on live website – even though I put in a totally different link. And the Vimeo URL really should be inaccessible due to the custom referrer anyway.
You can share your admin login with support@foliovision.com.
Thanks,
Martin
So I put a different video on that page and it played the video. However, it only downloaded the previous video and not the updated one.
I tried a new test page just to see if I could get the updated video to download from that URL and I couldn’t even get the video to play. It said “html5. Unsupported video format…” Even though it plays on the URL we used originally. So now I’m completely lost again.
I’ll email the credentials over.
Hello Luke,
on that new page you used (URL redacted) as the video source which doesn’t work.
Thank you for the login, I put in the correct video now and the 4K Video Downloader now offers that original video for your new test page. Which doesn’t make sense obviously. I think it just caches the last detected video for your website to give you at last something.
Please try to set that alternative referred for that original video it’s still trying to download and see if it will be able to download afterwards.
Thanks,
Martin
Am I incorrectly setting the alternative referrer? I thought I had that set up from the beginning…
Hello Luke,
I tested with the video on (URL redacted) and the secret referrer is set properly.
Is 4K Video Downloader still able to download that video which is no longer on that page at all? You could try to replace the source video on Vimeo and then see if it will download that. I think it might be caching a lot of information and that’s what’s giving us the impression that it still works.
Thanks,
Martin
It just keeps downloading the original video no matter what other video I put there. So I think its okay then? But we never really changed anything about it so I don’t get how its solved.
Hello Luke,
it’s true that there were no changes. 4K Video Downloader just remembered what video can be downloaded from your test page before you put up FV Player Vimeo Security and then kept offering that same video over and over again. We did waste some time trying to figure it out.
But of course it was not a waste of time, it’s always important to start up-to-date with what are the latest video downloading tools.
Thanks,
Martin
Hey Martin, is there anyway to edit this thread or delete it because when I Google the website I created “(redacted)” this is one of the results and I don’t want people knowing I’m using FV Player/Vimeo as my host to maximize security. So if there is a way to take out the website I mention earlier and in this paragraph that would be greatly appreciated!
Hello Luke,
I have removed all URLs and mentions of your site’s name from this thread.
Making the web work for you,
Maria
