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this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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There's not video format I know that has embedded encryption, total or partial. Neither I know any video players that would expect the user to introduce a password mid video.
So it's doable but you would probably need to do it all yourself.
Easiest way would really divide the video into multiple parts, the ones you want encrypted and the ones you do not. Then encrypt the files in general and call for decryption before attempting to play the encrypted parts with some external ui element.
I'd like to do the following: for the first 15 minutes, I want to play the video normally and then either not show the rest or display a frozen image instead.
I occasionally encounter corrupted videos that only show certain parts and not the entire content.
I was wondering if I could replicate such a situation based on my selection. However, I would also like the option to view the entire video normally if I choose to do so through an alternative method
What you see is due to file corruption. The bits are not readable.
What you need can be done. You need a script that takes the video and purposely encrypt part of the data. Here you need to know the file format so you know what tou can encrypt.
The it's just a matter to run the script to encrypt and decrypt your video as needed.
Depending of the amount of security you require take into consideration that knowing that part of the video was purposely encrypted it's easy. Decryption of that part would depend on the strength of your algorithm and your key.
You should also take into account that depending on how the video is compressed (most videos are compressed, raw video takes too much space) you may not be able to cut with much precision the point in witch you want the video to stop being legible, depending of the type of compression it may have a few seconds of video each type which share the same data.
low security is ok, how can I go about it? any software or anything else I need to know
I suppose it's simple enough for a python script. I don't know about video formats but I don't think it would be really hard.
Thank you again.
I’m afraid I have no knowledge of Python or any scripting languages.
I hope this is just a beginner's brainstorming session, and that someone can guide me as if I were five years old.
You will have to do some work yourself (or hire someone to code the solution for you).
If the intended use is on linux, you could also write a bash script for it. If the position in the file (as in exact number of bytes till that position) is known, then you could use dd to cut the video file in two pieces, use gpg to encrypt the second part and then probably also use dd to put both pieces together again.
A video player like VLC should still be able to play the first part of the file (though other players might have bigger problems with such a file). To play the full file, you need to use your script to again seperate the two pieces, use gpg to decrypt the second part and put them back together.
You can also do this in python. Doing it cross platform (Linux, Mac and Windows) will be more difficult.