Private video hosting
Private video hosting is a way of hosting video so that only approved viewers, such as signed-in users, employees or paying students, can play it. Videos are not listed or searchable, and every playback request is checked against a rule your own system controls, usually through a signed, expiring link or token. Private hosting is about who can watch. Secure hosting adds controls that make copying harder, such as encryption, DRM and watermarks, so a private library can still be recorded by someone who has access.
How does private video hosting work?
Private hosting moves the access check from the web page to the video itself. Each video is stored without a public address. When a signed-in viewer opens it, your backend checks whether that person may watch, for example whether they are enrolled, employed or assigned the case, and then issues a short-lived signed token for that video.
The player sends the token with its requests for the manifest and segments. The video service, or the CDN in front of it, verifies the signature and the expiry before serving anything. A request with no token, an altered token or an expired one is refused, even if it has the right video address.
Because the token expires, access ends on its own. A link copied into a chat stops working within minutes or hours, and someone whose account is closed cannot get a fresh token. The rule about who may watch stays in your own system, where it is already audited.
Private video hosting vs. unlisted videos
An unlisted video is hidden from search and from public pages, but anyone holding the link can play it. Privacy depends on the address staying secret, and addresses do not stay secret: they are forwarded, pasted into forums, saved in browser history and logged by tools along the way. Once the link leaks, it works for everyone, indefinitely, until someone notices.
Private video hosting does not depend on secrecy. The address can leak, because without a valid token it plays nothing. Tokens are issued per viewer and expire, so the useful life of any shared link is short.
The two can live side by side. Trailers, marketing clips and public lessons can stay unlisted or public, while enrolled-only courses, internal meetings and customer recordings run behind signed access. The choice is per video, based on what a leak would cost, not one setting for the whole library.
Private video hosting vs. secure video hosting
Private hosting decides who can start playback. Secure hosting also tries to control what an approved viewer can do once playback starts. The difference shows up when someone who is allowed in wants to keep or share a copy.
With private hosting alone, a viewer with access can still save segments with a stream downloader, or record the screen. Secure hosting adds encryption so saved segments are useless without a key, DRM so that key is released only to a licensed player on a trusted device, and watermarks so a recording shows where it came from.
Regulated recordings add a third question: who is contractually responsible for the files. US telehealth providers need a Business Associate Agreement with any vendor that stores or transmits patient video. That is a written commitment to settle with a vendor before the first upload, not a setting in a player, and it often decides which vendors are even eligible.
What breaks private video hosting?
Most privacy failures come from a few gaps between the login and the video. Each one leaves a working address that plays without your system's permission, and none of them shows up until a link travels.
- A login on the page, but a public video URL in the player behind it.
- A plain MP4 file in a storage bucket, which anyone can download whole.
- Tokens that live for days, so a forwarded link keeps working.
- Signing done in the browser or the app, which exposes the signing key.
- One playback ID shared by free previews and paid lessons.
- No plan for recordings of a live session, which may be published with weaker rules than the stream.
How does FastPix handle private video hosting?
In FastPix, privacy is a property of the playback ID. Every asset and live stream has one or more playback IDs, and each is either public or signed. A signed playback ID plays only with a JWT created by your backend using a FastPix signing key, and each token carries its own expiry.
The rule covers images too. Thumbnails, posters and storyboards inherit the playback ID's access policy, so private media needs a JWT for its images as well, and a poster cannot expose what the stream protects. Video, posters and storyboards can also be served from your own custom domain.
A trailer can be cut as a clip with its own public playback ID while the full video keeps a signed one. The playback policy set on a live stream carries over to its recording, so a private class stays private on replay.
Recordings arrive through resumable upload SDKs for web, iOS, Android and Flutter, and existing libraries move over from other video platforms or S3 with the FastPix Migration Tool. On WordPress, including LearnDash, TutorLMS and LifterLMS sites, the ready-made FastPix WordPress plugin signs playback with links that last from 2 minutes to 24 hours, 15 minutes by default, adds DRM when needed and applies a watermark at upload. FastPix has no geo-blocking and no IP restriction: country or network rules belong in the backend that signs the token. FastPix can set the storage region on request for recordings with data-location rules; ask which regions are available.
The library is billed on usage: Standard encoding free up to 4K and counted per source minute, storage per rendition-minute and streaming per minute watched. The free plan covers 10 videos, with no card.
