Have you considered using any kind of video gallery module or structured content template that supports video instead?  Allowing video to be displayed and previewed requires more than just linking to it in any specific way.  

Thanks for replying, Will. Can you suggest any that can still protect the video? I need to be certain that if someone with legitimate access to the video shares the link to the video with someone else, then that other person needs to sign in (and be a member of a particular role) before the video can be viewed. None of the modules I have looked at do this, hence looking at protected folders and LinkClick.aspx functionality. LinkClick.aspx links work, but they don't have the streaming functionality for skipping through a video.

... any module that presents a link to the underlying .mp4 or .webm would not be suitable.

Posted By James Clarkson on 2/27/2025 9:50 AM

Thanks for replying, Will. Can you suggest any that can still protect the video? I need to be certain that if someone with legitimate access to the video shares the link to the video with someone else, then that other person needs to sign in (and be a member of a particular role) before the video can be viewed. None of the modules I have looked at do this, hence looking at protected folders and LinkClick.aspx functionality. LinkClick.aspx links work, but they don't have the streaming functionality for skipping through a video.

If it were me, I'd use a combination of a folder provider (e.g., Evotiva Global Storage) to host the videos securely at a cloud file serving location (e.g., Azure, Amazon, etc.).  Then, implement a module like the EasyDNN Gallery module to display the videos.  This approach will give you an easy-to-backup and restore solution that hosts the files in a redundant and highly available serving location which includes built-in (configurable) permissions to protect the video.  Then, you further display and protect the video on the site using the gallery module and on-site permissions in DNN.  

 

Thanks, Will. I had already looked at EasyDNN but not at Evotiva, so I'll take a look there.
In the meantime, however, I think I have found a solution acceptable to my client where I *can* present the link to the underlying .mp4 and use IIS rewrite rules to limit access based on the referrer ...

Another way to do this now that I think about it would be to use a paid account at Vimeo (or another site like it).  The paid account ensures that the video is only played at domains/sites you choose.  Then, you just copy/paste the embed codes, or write a module to integrate with their API to pull them in directly to your site.