Using php to output an mp4 video

Question

Ok basically I have a project that requires that videos are hidden from the users while still able to see them (by using php). here\'s what i got so far:

The video.

Answer 1

Iphones use something called byte-ranges for audio and video requests. See this link for a solution. It's in Appendix A.

http://mobiforge.com/developing/story/content-delivery-mobile-devices

Answer 2

Here is a code snippet that will do what you want (from this question). The PHP solution seems more elegant, and it adds a more efficient solution that might work that uses the web server to serve the content.

<?php

$path = 'file.mp4';

$size=filesize($path);

$fm=@fopen($path,'rb');
if(!$fm) {
  // You can also redirect here
  header ("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
  die();
}

$begin=0;
$end=$size;

if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'])) {
  if(preg_match('/bytes=\h*(\d+)-(\d*)[\D.*]?/i', $_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'], $matches)) {
    $begin=intval($matches[0]);
    if(!empty($matches[1])) {
      $end=intval($matches[1]);
    }
  }
}

if($begin>0||$end<$size)
  header('HTTP/1.0 206 Partial Content');
else
  header('HTTP/1.0 200 OK');

header("Content-Type: video/mp4");
header('Accept-Ranges: bytes');
header('Content-Length:'.($end-$begin));
header("Content-Disposition: inline;");
header("Content-Range: bytes $begin-$end/$size");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary\n");
header('Connection: close');

$cur=$begin;
fseek($fm,$begin,0);

while(!feof($fm)&&$cur<$end&&(connection_status()==0))
{ print fread($fm,min(1024*16,$end-$cur));
  $cur+=1024*16;
  usleep(1000);
}
die();

More Performance

Note that this is not the most efficient way to do it, because the whole file needs to go through PHP, so you will just need to try how it goes for you.

Assuming the reason you want to do this is to restrict access, and you need more efficiency later, you can use a flag for the web server.

Apache with X-Sendfile module or lightty (nginx info here)

$path = 'file.mp4';
header("X-Sendfile: $path");
die();

This is a bit more advanced and you should only use it if you need it, but it is relaxing to know you have an upgrade option when you start out with something that is rather easy but has mediocre performance.

Answer 3

Yes, its easy to do. No need to set those headers manually. Let the server do it automatically.

Heres a working script -

ob_start();

if( isset($_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE']) )

$opts['http']['header']="Range: ".$_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'];

$opts['http']['method']= "HEAD";

$conh=stream_context_create($opts);

$opts['http']['method']= "GET";

$cong= stream_context_create($opts);

$out[]= file_get_contents($real_file_location_path_or_url,false,$conh);

$out[]= $http_response_header;

ob_end_clean();

array_map("header",$http_response_header);

readfile($real_file_location_path_or_url,false,$cong);

Answer 4

This code was very handy for me, but I ran into trouble because I am using session vars, and PHP queues access to sessions. If a video was loading, all AJAX requests were impossible, etc. So make sure to call session_write_close() before you start output.