Secured Media Files

Question

I've been trying to figure out how the Media Key Pref works in QT. Can I encrypt a QT Movie that I send to someone? If not, what is the function of that pref?
iMac G4 1 GHz   Mac OS X (10.2.x)   Usiang QT 6.5.3 Pro

Answer 1

Quote
QuickTime Access Keys
QuickTime access keys (also referred to as "media keys") make it possible to protect data. QuickTime access keys were introduced with QuickTime 3. The QuickTime access keys allow an application that supplies data to register a password for the data with QuickTime and allows a user to enter the password to gain access to the data. For example, a codec can protect data it compresses with a password, so that it is available only to someone with the password. Similarly, the creator of a movie can require a password to view the movie. In order to gain access to protected data, the user enters the access key in the QuickTime Settings control panel.
There are actually two kinds of access keys:
system access keys
application access keys
Data protected by a system access key can be unlocked by any QuickTime caller on the computer. Data protected by an application access key can be unlocked only by QuickTime clients for that application.
System access keys are useful for data that needs to be used by more than one application. When a system access key is registered for data, applications do not have to perform any additional registration to unlock the data. In contrast, application access keys are normally registered by the application in which the data is available, and each application registers the application access keys it uses.
Certain compression formats, such as the Intel Indeo and Sorenson Vision 3 formats for video compression, allow data to be encrypted when it is compressed. For software to gain access to the encrypted data, the access key for the data must be registered with QuickTime. For example, a CD-ROM title could register one or more access keys for encrypted video data it presents. Once the access keys are registered, the keys are available to the decompressor component that will be used to decompress the data. The CD-ROM title can then use the encrypted data in the same way it uses unencrypted data.
Sorenson Vision 2 video compression also makes use of the QuickTime access keys to protect data, but it does not actually encrypt the data.
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2038.html#Section4
See also:
http://developer.apple.com/cgi-bin/search.pl?&q="access%20keys"&num=10&site=(quicktime)