Play FLV directly from memory.

[Gomer]

Hi!
I should develop a flash video player that plays FLV securely, i.e. it should be loaded from remote URL into memory, decrypted and loaded into the player. The problem is that the standard flash player activex is not able to play FLV from memory directly. Is it possible to avoid creating temp files?
Thank you!

[Gillius]

I don't know how Flash or its player works from a developer integration perspective, but looking at it from purely a blackbox viewpoint, it seems to me that you should be able to implement it as an HTTP proxy. You can set up an embedded web server on some port at localhost, which services requests from Flash. So, you point flash at your localhost URL. Then your server program contacts the URL on the remote system that is encrypted. As it downloads data it decrypts it and forwards it to the local flash client. If you do it that way you can play files of unlimited size (because you don't have to buffer the entire file), and the client can start to play the file before it is all downloaded.

Ultimately, though, this sounds like a waste of time to do what I said, because this is what SSL (https) does for you. The SSL sends the video encrypted over the network and then decrypts it. Would it just be possible to have the remote URL serve the encrypted data simply as https?

[Gomer]

The issue that for all standart Flash Player ActiveX you have to save file, that should be played, to a temporary location to load it and play. You'll have to create a corresponding link that you can pass to the Flash Player ActiveX and then delete file after it is played. So as far local copy is created, this copy is still vulnerable for 3rd party access and it have to be downloaded entirely.

[Gillius]

Well I don't know what the ActiveX provides you. If you are trying to tell me that the ONLY way it gives you to play a movie is to point it at a file, then that is your only option (obviously). If you can pass it a URL instead, then you can use the solution like I said. If it can play a movie from a pipe, then you can use the same technique that way. So, the question is, what interfaces does it provide to you to play the movie? I figured it could take at least a URL since the typical Flash movie is located on the internet.

[Gomer]

Found:) Library called F-IN-BOX. It plays FLV directly from stream, so there is no temp files and FLV also have not to be downloaded entirely.
http://f-in-box.com/

[Gomer]

Thanks!