How To Questions on Streaming and Site Passwords

Please help, I've scoured the Web for answers to the below and couldn't find any answers here or elsewhere for 2 things I thought would be a breeze to find tutorials on (if not a breeze to actually accomplish)...

1. I have a website. I would like to stream some .flv files onto my site. I have NO idea how to do this. I do NOT want to use a site like YouTube and embed the files, b/c I need to keep these files somewhat private. The question: HOW do I stream my videos onto my website? Is there a template or 2 I can use for this?

2. I need to create INDIVIDUAL passwords for each person who views these videos - that way I know exactly WHO is viewing (and, perhaps, who gave out their password if I'm getting a lot of hits). So...
a) how do I create a password-protected Web page for the above videos?
b) Er, How do I keep track of this in my Website statistics? Will each password have its own page?

And, finally, is there an EASIER way to do what I need to do? (Like, say, a website that can do all this for me if I host my own videos or something)

THANK YOU!

 

The protection you are looking for is often expensive. You could probably make something with PHP or something, or using htaccess or other server settings. I've made PHP things like that before, which would embed a php script that would return the correct file based on cookie or query password, or a default blank file. There may be services that do that, but I haven't come across any. If you had your own server, you could probably set up access privaleges.

 

Thank you for the reply.

I wish had some clue what you said.

 

lol Sorry.
I think there are sites that host files with password protection coming close to what you are looking for, but I haven't used any of them and can't recommend one.
If you use a site that allows PHP, I could make a hack password protection scheme for them. The hard part would be keeping them secure. I would probably encode them in hexadecimal or something, and embed them in the PHP code, so the only backdoor would be to access the source itself (such as through your account itself).
However, this is quite complicated. It would probably be better to use a server that allows htaccess files, although I don't use them myself because I don't have a server that allows them. I think you can set up individual passwords with them, but I don't know if it always keeps a log of who signs in.
The cookies I mentioned are so if you sign in to the site, it won't forget you until you sign out or close the browser. This can be optional.
The default file would be one someone sees if they put in the wrong password, probably explaining to them that they should try again.
It would be good to have a log of all attempts, so you can see if someone was trying to break in by guessing.

 

Wow!

Thanks for that.

Sorry for the delay in response, BUT, in the intervening time, I found two things that helped:

1. Dynamic Drive's htaccess
and
2. the JW streaming info.

What I did was this:
I created ONE XML file for the video and uploaded each video. Then I created SEVERAL HTML pages. Each one is in its OWN folder, which allowed me to give EACH one its own htaccess files (and thus their own password). I then went to GoStats.com and created a counter for each page.

That seems to have worked: I have individual log-ins AND can keep track of who signs in and for how long (and if they go but don't actually sign in, the time logged for them in the stats is 00:00:00).

So that was my solution. Thank you so very much tho' for the other suggestion!

 

Sounds good, and easier to maintain than my suggestion. Glad you got it solved.