Dear fellow Filemaker users,
I am looking for advice on how to make a major modification to a
video database I maintain. The database is a catalog of brief video
clips, each a few minutes long, about 6,000 of them and growing to a
projected 20-30,000 over the next few years. In order to make these
clips accessible to my colleagues in my division, I set upt the
database with container fields that store a reference to each video
clip file. When the user double-clicks on the container field in a
record, the appropriate video player is launched (WindowsMedia player
for wmv clips and Quicktime for mp4 clips). The database is served by
Filemaker Server 7, and the video clips are stored on a separate
network volume. Users access the database with Filemaker Pro 8 using
either Windows XP or Mac OS X machines.
This system works beautifully, but it requires that the volume
containing the video clips be accessible to the user's computer,
i.e., that the network volume where the clips are stored be
accessible to the user. Due to new privacy concerns related to a new
category of users joining our workgroup, I need to restructure the
database so as to control access to the video clips through
Filemaker. Specifically, our new guidelines make it not acceptable
for users to be able to mount the server containing all the video
clips (even with read-only access permission). The point is to
prevent users from being able to make their own local copies of the
entire video clip library.
So I am trying to come up with a new scheme with the same
functionality, but that does not require the end-user to have direct
access to the volume containing the video clips. Specifically, I need
to implement the following features:
1. Users log into the served database
2. When users double-click on a field with a video clip, the video
clip plays.
3. The video clip must not be accessible through direct disk access,
i.e., it must not be accessible through the Finder (in Mac OS X) or
through (whatever name describes the Finder in Windows; is it really
"Internet Explorer"?)
4. Ideally, the video would play only in "streaming" mode, and not be
downloadable to the user's computer.
5. The database should contain only references to video clip files.
Keeping all the video clips within the database is not practical and
not a good idea, as the size would become unwieldy.
For No. 4, I am aware it's a separate question, which may be solved
by using Flash rather than Quicktime/Windowsmedia. But I am stuck at
steps 2-3. I can write a stript that selects and imports a particular
video clip temporarily into the database for viewing purposes, but I
don't see a way to play a video clip within Filemaker.
Any suggestions would be welcome, because I find myself having to
contemplate converting the whole thing to a Web/browser-based system,
and I'd rather not do that if i can avoid it.
Currently Filemaker server 7 is running on a Windows XP machine, but
I have the option of switching to a Mac OS X machine. Users mostly
run FM-Pro 8 on Windows XP laptops, but a few users access the
database from Mac OS X computers. If a choice MUST be made, the
group's priority is for Windows machines (though I will go to great
lengths to maintain Mac accessibility).
Thank you in advance,
Pietro
