Local player with web-service authorisation

[JamesWhistler]

Hi all,

I know very little about VLC player so please bear with me.

I'm investigating the possibility of using VLC player to play video content locally. Perhaps nothing suprising there.

However I want to customise the player to check for authorisation to play via a web service. The web service will check that the local player has the authority to play the content before responding to the local player to that effect. At that point, the local player will be free to play for a specified period of time, let's say 4 hours. After 4 hours, the player will have to reseek authorisation via the web service.

Does this sound like something that is achievable using VLC and its libraries?

If so, does anyone have any idea of how best to achieve it?

Many thanks in advance for any help offered,
James

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Well, you could have the playback done by VLC and do the autorisation in a different piece of code.

[JamesWhistler]

Many thanks for your reply.

Jean, I've had a quick look at your website and I see that you work on projects of this nature. Would you be interested in being commissioned to build something as described? If so, what would the likely costs be?

Thanks again,
James

[steward]

I know this is almost heresy in open-source land, but I too am forced to consider this option.
Our films are not appropriate for distribution via rapidshare, hotfile etc.

I am an competent/experienced coder, but not familiar with this kind of application (video playing and streaming) so I wonder what kind of approach is best.

For a (progressive or file) download, it seems the file itself must be munged (so a normal player will puke). The "de-mung" logic might be built in to the player itself.
Authorization seems straightforward, but how to mangle/unmangle the playable streams ?

Any advice, links, pointers much appreciated.