Hiding your movies with MPlayer

Up With A Bang!

This discussion focuses around using the free video player called MPlayer. Visit here to learn about using MPlayer.

To state the obvious, hiding files (as opposed to encryption) depends on the searcher not knowing where to find the files. It is actually the data in the files that needs to be hidden. The file itself is like a package. The package name (ie: filename) can easily be changed. So if we combine a searcher's ignorance with a renamed file, you have a safe bet that person won't find your movies.

Searching for files

When someone is searching for files they probably have an idea what they are searching for. For movies these are files with particular extensions like mpg, mpeg, rm, mp4, avi, wma, etc (1). They also expect movies to be played on particular common movie players like Real Media, Windows Media Player or QuickTime (2). And finally they'll also search under folders with obvious names like "movies", "My Movies", etc (3).

Hiding files

To hide a file, simply address the three points listed above. 1) Change or remove the file extensions, 2) Don't use a standard media player (they have history records), and 3) Put all your movies in folder with non-descriptive names.

Using MPlayer for hidden movie files

The difficulty in meeting the 3 points below is having a media player that creates no history records and that can play a movie without knowing its extension. That movie player is MPlayer.

• Change or remove all file extensions from your movies. If you choose to change them, pick something meaning less, or something like "tmp". Don't use "dat" because that is a movie format.
• Store your movies in a folder deep inside some application's directory tree. The Windows directory is good for this because you are less like to accidently unstall them if removing an application
• Put a shortcut to MPlayer in a Visit here quick launch tool bar as demonstrated here.
• Navigate to your movies via Explorer and drag them onto your quick launch shortcut

Why does this work so well?

• Most people curious about your computer contents are not trained professionals. Or they are poorly trained professionals.
• Most people are not aware even of what MPlayer is and they sure'll won't recognize its ugly little icon on the quick launch (which you could remove after viewing your movies each time anyways)
• Most people will search (or just find) movies based on their file extensions or folders
• Movie files are often large which make them recognizable as movie files but with incorrect file extensions they still won't play where a searcher expects
• No history records are made of what movies you've viewed

And remember, this won't stop law enforcement but is useful for shared computers or work laptops.