I use the HTML5 Video element to display videos on my sign language site. One option under Element Properties is to show video controls. I include that so students can pause the video at any time, etc. When the page is displayed there are three vertical dots in the lower right before the video is played. They give the option to: Download, Playback Speed and Picture in Picture.

How can I eliminate the option to Download the video?

Thanks for your advice.

Hi Galen
Where are you hosting the site

If it's on YouTube which it looks like as the options shown are standard for them, there used to be some code you could put in as options to stop that, but since Google took control they are stopping that custom code from working it might still work for a while but one day !!!!! ??? The other thing is there are third party video download apps that can download videos from any site that anyone who has that app installed no matter what you do.
Why do you want stop download video etc from happening??

Hi Wayan!!!

Hosted by a company called WebHostingHub in Virginia.
I can email you the username and password to access the site if you like.

Just
the website address for the moment

Hi,

All video files are stored with my hosting service. I teach American Sign Language (ASL) through a local community college. My ASL website is only accessible to those students who register for the classes. That's why the site is password protected. That is also why I don't want the videos to be downloadable. Students have access to the site and the materials on the site only for the duration of each semester.

The thing is Galen, it's somewhat difficult to stop things like that from happening, there are however, a few things that can be done to make it hard for "normal" none teckky humans to do something like that. The hosting service you are using may have a solution (hotlinking) for example might disable the ability to download but the options would still appear. There maybe some JS that could be applied, but then a tecck aware student could easily overide stuff like that

Then at the end of the day,, there are as I mentioned a multitude of third party downloaders that make all of that worthless,, and finally SCREEN RECORDERS. simpy record the video you are watching save it when finished, watch at anytime there after.

I nderstand that the main thing would be to stop those options appearing,, that's why I think you need talk to your video hosting service, because those options are not something that SITE DESIGNER HTML video element has any direct control over

Yes, I understand what you are saying.

I guess I want to at least make it more difficult to download the videos. Having that option right on the page itself almost encourages the download.

You see the problem is that in order to show a video to a user, the browder has to download the video in the first place, so very difficult to stop,

I can do a partial fix, on 2 browsers (firefox / brave) where the "Download" option is not displayed, on 2 other browsers (chrome / microsoft edge) it still displays

I tried a test on none of my sites for "Hotlinking" to disable downloads, but that didn't work

I tried some JS to stop download MP4 files, a bit unreliable (and easily overwritten, but still doesn't stop the 3 options from showing

The only way I got it to work so as those 3 dots arn't shown on all browsers was to host the video locally, which isn't really that much of a problem (except for uploads) but then that depends on your hosting and bandwidths limits etc etc.

I wonder, could this work?

I have placed a video behind a transparent div, and in order to start and stop it, I have moved that transparent div a bit to the right.

It's late and I'm too tired to look up how to disable right-click, but that would also be necessary.