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Asked: 2026-05-28T01:38:37+00:00

I’m sorry if the question is ambiguous, I’ll try to explain. I’m working on

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I’m sorry if the question is ambiguous, I’ll try to explain.

I’m working on an existing PHP download script for videos and some parts of it are broken. There’s code in there that’s supposed to place a specific member code inside the video file before download, but it doesn’t work. Here’s the code:

//embed user's code in video file
$fpTarget = fopen($filename, "a");
fwrite($fpTarget, $member_code);
fclose($fpTarget);

$member_code is a random 6-character code.

Now, this would make sense to me if it were a text file, but since it’s a video file, how could this possibly work and what is it supposed to do? If the member code is somehow added to the video, how can I see it after download it? I have no experience with video files, so any help is appreciated (a modification of the available code or new code would be equally welcome).

I’m sorry I can’t give a more precise description of what the code is supposed to do, I’m trying to figure that out myself.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It may work, depending on the format/type of the video. MPG files are fairly tolerant of “noise” in a file and players would skip over your code because it doesn’t look like valid video frame data.

    Other formats/players may puke, because the format requires certain data be at specific offsets relative to the end of the file, which you’ve now shifted by 6 characters.

    Your best bet is to figure see if whatever format you’re serving up has provisions for metadata in its specifications. e.g. there might be support for a comment field somewhere that you can simply slap the code into.

    However, if you’re doing all this for ‘security’ or tracking unauthorized sharing of the video, then simply writing the number into a header is fairly easy to bypass. A better bet would be to watermark the video somehow so that the code is embedded in the actual video data, so that “This video belongs to member XYZ only” is displayed while playing.

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