When an encrypted movie is played does it all have to dycrypt before it plays?

[MickyD]

Hi. A bit of a noob question here. I really like Axcrypt and been looking to switch to it. I was wondering if there was any overhead to playing encrypted movie files. My testing so far had revealed:

1. Encrypted 1gb mov file (took about 2 minutes)
2. Played the mov back – Axcrypt progress meter showed it was busy for about 20 seconds then the file played
3. Subsequent openings of the encrypted file play immediately

I suppose it looks like once it plays back it becomes optimised in some way? I was wondering if you could enlighten me. I ask because clearly this has implications when streaming from cloud sources as to decrypt the file in full would require it all to be pre cached first which would be inefficient not to mention add a few minutes to the beginning of any viewing.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Many thanks.

 

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello MickyD,

Yes, the entire movie is decrypted before playing – AxCrypt is not always optimal for encrypting/decrypting large streaming media since the decryption process does not support streaming consumers such as video players.

That it’s faster the second time is due to AxCrypt not having cleaned up the decrypted file. You should have a red ‘Broom’ icon in this case, and if you over over it you’ll see an explanation. AxCrypt cannot wipe and delete the decrypted file until it’s sure that it’s no longer being used by the ‘receiving’ application, and sometimes this even means you have to manually tell AxCrypt when is a good time to clean up by clicking the broom when red.

[Andrew]

MickyD, it’s probably easier to use container encryption for your porn movie collection.

VeraCrypt creates encrypted containers which, to unlock, you have to enter your password. You then have access to all of your encrypted files in lightning time. It also provides the optional facility to have 2 passwords – one a ‘duress’ password which will open your container and show a few normal (private-looking) files of your choosing and the second password is the ‘decryption’ (the real) password: to access your files.

AxCrypt works better with single files. VeraCrypt is designed for encrypting whole containers and the container can be dragged on and off a USB stick. VeraCrypt is not good for uploading to cloud storage because each time one file in the container is modified the whole container needs to be re-uploaded.

[MickyD]

Thanks for your help. I used to use TrueCrypt but recall some difficulty in that I had to set the size of the encrypted container beforehand. So I had this 1tb file buy only half full. Just seemed really wasteful and unnecessary. The file level encryption of AxCrypt seems perfect but then I have this decryption overhead.

It seems to me logical that files suited to streaming could be encrypted in such a way as to allow for decryption on the fly. Any idea of any products that will do this? I just want to put all my stuff in my Amazon drive in a way that only I can read away from big brother.

Thanks

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello MickyD,

Sorry, no I don’t know of any encryption product that would support your streaming decrypted data from the cloud scenario – except of course cloud storage provider provided encryption, but it kind of defeats the purpose.

[Gordon]

@MickyD: VeraCrypt supports dynamic archives – you state a maximum size (e.g. 10 GB) and it’ll start off extremely small and expand up to the maximum size. Therefore it’s not wasting any of your disk space.

The only encrypted cloud storage that supports on-the-fly decryption of movies is Tresorit but they are expensive – £6.67/month for the cheapest ‘Individual’ package (or £8/month if you don’t want to pay annually).

That’s a a great solution if you can afford it as it’s truly zero-knowledge but you have to pay.

Because companies like Tresorit can’t see what data you have stored, they can’t sell it to advertisers. That’s how companies like Google and OneDrive can afford to provide free cloud storage – your data isn’t encrypted from them.

So your options are:

• AxCrypt for individual files (slow for decryption, fast to upload to a cloud)
• VeraCrypt for containers (fast for decryption, slow to upload to a cloud)
• Tresorit (fast to decrypt, fast to upload to cloud, encrypted, streams on-the-fly)
• Google Drive / OneDrive (free, fast to upload to cloud but not encrypted)

[Author]

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