Hi Pietro,
I'm not an expert in this, but I'd try to host the media files using
a web server and then view them in FileMaker web viewer or, for older
clients, the browser. To me the simplest option would be to use
Custom Web Publishing of Server Advanced or Server v9 with a simple
page that takes a single parameter, some ID and returns a HTML with
proper ‘embed’ tag or whatever tag they use to embed video files.
If Custom Web Publishing is not possible, then any web server should
do, I guess. IIS/Apache, or maybe Mac OS X Server built-in streaming
server, or the SuperContainer plug-in. The page code can probably be
built with any CGI script or maybe JavaScript.
If your users had v9, then it should be possible to build the code of
the page in FileMaker and pass it to web viewer via the ‘data’ protocol.
I'm not sure how a movie can be set to disallow saving to a disk; as
far as I understand this should be a property of the movie itself and
even then a dedicated hacker could get the content anyway.
Kind regards,
--
Mikhail Edoshin
Information Analyst
Skeleton Key
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Jun 17, 2008, at 5:08 PM, Pietro Mazzoni wrote:
Dear fellow Filemaker users,
I am looking for advice on how to make a major modification to a
video database I maintain. The database is a catalog of brief video
clips, each a few minutes long, about 6,000 of them and growing to
a projected 20-30,000 over the next few years. In order to make
these clips accessible to my colleagues in my division, I set upt
the database with container fields that store a reference to each
video clip file. When the user double-clicks on the container field
in a record, the appropriate video player is launched (WindowsMedia
player for wmv clips and Quicktime for mp4 clips). The database is
served by Filemaker Server 7, and the video clips are stored on a
separate network volume. Users access the database with Filemaker
Pro 8 using either Windows XP or Mac OS X machines.
This system works beautifully, but it requires that the volume
containing the video clips be accessible to the user's computer,
i.e., that the network volume where the clips are stored be
accessible to the user. Due to new privacy concerns related to a
new category of users joining our workgroup, I need to restructure
the database so as to control access to the video clips through
Filemaker. Specifically, our new guidelines make it not acceptable
for users to be able to mount the server containing all the video
clips (even with read-only access permission). The point is to
prevent users from being able to make their own local copies of the
entire video clip library.
So I am trying to come up with a new scheme with the same
functionality, but that does not require the end-user to have
direct access to the volume containing the video clips.
Specifically, I need to implement the following features:
1. Users log into the served database
2. When users double-click on a field with a video clip, the video
clip plays.
3. The video clip must not be accessible through direct disk
access, i.e., it must not be accessible through the Finder (in Mac
OS X) or through (whatever name describes the Finder in Windows; is
it really "Internet Explorer"?)
4. Ideally, the video would play only in "streaming" mode, and not
be downloadable to the user's computer.
5. The database should contain only references to video clip files.
Keeping all the video clips within the database is not practical
and not a good idea, as the size would become unwieldy.
For No. 4, I am aware it's a separate question, which may be solved
by using Flash rather than Quicktime/Windowsmedia. But I am stuck
at steps 2-3. I can write a stript that selects and imports a
particular video clip temporarily into the database for viewing
purposes, but I don't see a way to play a video clip within Filemaker.
Any suggestions would be welcome, because I find myself having to
contemplate converting the whole thing to a Web/browser-based
system, and I'd rather not do that if i can avoid it.
Currently Filemaker server 7 is running on a Windows XP machine,
but I have the option of switching to a Mac OS X machine. Users
mostly run FM-Pro 8 on Windows XP laptops, but a few users access
the database from Mac OS X computers. If a choice MUST be made, the
group's priority is for Windows machines (though I will go to great
lengths to maintain Mac accessibility).
Thank you in advance,
Pietro
