I would like to avoid someone saving a movie file (.rm, .mov, avi) to their harddrive and opening it up in a NLE and removing the music track. If I were to have my video in a Flash movie format they wouldn't be able to extract the music. Can this be done with the other type of files somehow?
If someone can see your movie on their screen, they can save it to their hard drive if they are determined enough. If nothing else they could use screen motion capture software to snag it right from the media player's window. This is true for Flash movies as well as any other type. You can make it difficult, but the only way to keep someone from saving your movie is to never post it to begin with.
The music can be re-recorded on a PC, regardless of the original format. You can downgrade the quality so that you're only giving people a taster, but recording it is simple and the software's cheap.
I didn't know this could be done with Flash too. I was concerned because some of the royalty-free music I'm interested in buying states in the license agreement that you can't put it on the web unless it's in a streamable format. And they always say "like Flash". I've been trying to find out if .rm .mov .avi is also considered a streamable format but no one can tell me that.
>I guess there is no way to save multiple "versions for streaming" when making a movie from MS.
Not that I know of - if you're going to produce muliple versions it might be worth rendering as an avi first and then using that as your input for the other versions. That way you won't have to spend too much time on the processor intensive stuff like transitions and fx. I guess it's a balancing act!
I'm streaming video and sound from the web using RealAudio. It is working very well.
It is a propriatary format so you really can not convert it to anything. Also, there is an "in between" file on the web site that calls the actual content file so you can not reach the source and down load it. You just stream from the source itself.
However, once again, if the person viewing your file can see it on the screen, it can be captured and saved. True, this can be difficult and perhaps beyond the reach of most casual web surfers. However, once you've made something available online, it's up for grabs. You cannot completely protect anything.
You can set up streaming control files for Windows Media and MPEG files as well so that they can be remotely streamed and prevent the viewer from being able to "Save As" from media player. Real isn't the only format that allows this. But, once again, if the person viewing your file can see it on the screen ...