What are the differences between Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography and HLS encryption? - ApsaraVideo Media Processing

The video encryption feature allows you to perform in-depth security processing on video content and prevent video data from being illegally acquired and transmitted. This feature is widely used to prevent video leaks and hotlinking in scenarios that require high security, such as online education and finance. ApsaraVideo Media Processing (MPS) supports two encryption methods: Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography and HTTP-Live-Streaming (HLS) encryption. We recommend that you use Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography in MPS. This topic provides a comparison between the two encryption methods. This way, you can select an appropriate encryption method based on your business requirements.

Scenarios

You can encrypt videos that require copyright protection, such as online education videos and professionally generated content (PGC), to prevent unauthorized downloads and spreads.

Method comparison

The following table describes the two video encryption methods that are supported by MPS.

Encryption method	Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography	HLS encryption
Description	Videos are encrypted based on proprietary AES128 encryption keys.	Videos are encrypted based on the HLS protocol.
Security level	High.	Low. You must keep your keys confidential. For example, you can configure limits on logon cookies and referers.
Prerequisites	Key Management Service (KMS) is enabled for creating and managing encryption keys. Alibaba Cloud CDN is enabled for playing and delivering videos.	Encryption keys are prepared by yourself.
Enabling method	Automatically enabled. To use Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography, you need to create a media workflow in the MPS console. Then, MPS transcodes and encrypts each input media file for playback.	Manually enabled.
Procedure	Create a media workflow and enable Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography. Configure CDN. Upload a video. Use ApsaraVideo Player SDK to play the video. For more information, see Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography	Call an operation to submit a transcoding job and configure parameters for HLS encryption. For more information, see Perform HLS encryption. Play a video based on the URL.
Supported output format	M3U8	M3U8
Limits on playback and delivery	You must use ApsaraVideo Player SDK for iOS, Android, or Flash to play videos encrypted by Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography. HTML5 players cannot play encrypted videos. You must use Alibaba Cloud CDN to deliver videos encrypted by Alibaba Cloud proprietary cryptography.	You can use a player that supports HLS encryption for playback.