[FFmpeg-devel] Would a crypto file be acceptable?

[Mark Gaiser]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 12:05 PM Tomas Härdin <git at haerdin.se> wrote:

> ons 2022-12-21 klockan 16:44 +0100 skrev Mark Gaiser:
> > Hi,
> >
> > The ffmpeg crypto protocol handler [1] allows one to play encrypted
> > media.
> >
> > The great thing here is that it allows playback of any media format
> > that
> > ffmpeg supports!
> > Have a container format like mkv as an encrypted blob, no problem for
> > the
> > crypto plugin!
> >
> > I'm explicitly mentioning mkv (though there's many more) here because
> > that
> > isn't possible in HLS/MPD. While those streaming formats handle
> > encryption
> > too, they are very limited in terms of supported codecs and
> > containers.
> >
> > Playback of encrypted data works like this:
> > ffplay encrypted_file -decryption_key $AES_KEY -decryption_iv $AES_IV
> >
> > While this works just fine, it's limited in use because the
> > cryptography
> > details have to be passed on the command line. Applications that
> > might well
> > support much of ffmpeg functionality can't easily hook into the
> > crypto
> > functionality. Take KODI for example, it allows playback of many of
> > the
> > formats ffmpeg supports but anything with crypto just isn't possible.
> > In
> > fact, anything that requires custom command line arguments isn't
> > possible.
>
> This sounds like business logic. Fix KODI instead. Much of this can
> also be handled by any competent OS at the filesystem layer.
>

Then M3U as a format is business logic too.
HLS and MPD are business logic too.
At least, based on your comment, they would fall into that same category.

The difference between those formats and my suggestion?
M3U -> playback of very specific formats
"crypto" -> playback of anything ffmpeg supports

M3U has a file format.
crypto has none.

Say a hypothetical streaming service (no, i don't have ambitions to start
one) would want to give access to higher quality and different codecs then
is possible with HLS/MPD.
A service like that currently has to invent their own custom format,
probably as a fork of ffmpeg, to accomplish this. With a file format for
crypto this functionality would just exist.

I'm suggesting that giving crypto this file format would be a win with not
even that much effort on the ffmpeg code side.


> /Tomas
>
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