What you are protecting against
For most course creators the risk is not a sophisticated pirate. It is a paying student who shares their login with three friends, or records a module and posts it in a group. Both are casual, and both respond to the same two things: making sharing inconvenient, and making it traceable.
MediaShield does both from the free plugin. It does not stop a determined person recording their screen, and nothing in a browser can. What it does is make that recording carry the student’s name.
The setup, in order
- Add each lesson video to the library. Go to MediaShield > Videos > Add New Video and paste the address from YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia or Bunny Stream, or upload a file to your own server. MediaShield detects the host. With Pro you can connect a host on the Platforms screen and import a whole library instead.
- Keep the protection level on Standard. Standard turns on the login gate, the viewer watermark and session tracking. Basic gates the video but records nothing and shows no watermark, so avoid it for paid lessons.
- Decide who can watch. Require Login is on by default. For a single course, that plus your course plugin’s own page protection is often enough. For tiers, set Restrict to Role per video.
- Place the video on the lesson. Use the MediaShield Video block or
[mediashield id=X]. - Watch it as a student. Log in as a test student and play it. You should see the name and IP move around the frame, and a session appear under MediaShield > Viewers.
Add your first video covers every field.
If you use LearnDash, Tutor LMS or LifterLMS
Pro links a video to a lesson from the LMS Integration panel on the video. Choose the lesson, set Complete at % (100, 90, 75 or 50 percent, or the site default) and tick Require enrollment to watch if only enrolled students should play it. MediaShield then adds the player to the lesson automatically and marks the lesson complete when the student reaches the threshold. See LMS and course plugins and the LMS guide.
On the free plugin you can still wire completion yourself: MediaShield fires actions at 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent watched for logged-in students.
Stopping the shared login
Max Concurrent Streams under MediaShield > Settings > Concurrent Streams defaults to 2. A student can watch on a laptop and a phone; a third device is told “Too many active streams. Please close another video first.” Raise it if families share a seat by design. See stop shared logins.
Knowing who finished
The Dashboard shows sessions and average completion for the last 7, 30 or 90 days. The Viewers screen lists each student with videos watched, average completion and last active time, and opens their full watch history. That is where you look when a student says their progress did not count. Pro adds heatmaps that show where students stop watching a lesson, which is often the clearest signal that a lesson needs re-recording. See watch analytics.
What it will not solve
MediaShield has no captions, chapters, quality selector or picture-in-picture. It hides the file address of self-hosted video only; a YouTube or Vimeo embed always carries its own ID, so use that host’s own privacy settings as well. And only videos you add to the MediaShield library are protected.
Common questions
Do I need Pro to protect a course?
No. The login gate, role gate, viewer watermark, stream limit and per-student analytics are all in the free plugin. Pro adds LMS completion and enrolment gating, heatmaps, realtime viewers, library import and CSV and PDF exports. See pricing.
Can students download my lessons?
A determined student can always record their screen, and a self-hosted file on an nginx server stays downloadable by address until you add the rule Site Health gives you. MediaShield blocks right-click saving, hides self-hosted file addresses and puts the student’s name on the video, so casual copying is harder and any recording is traceable.
Will it work with my course plugin?
Pro has built-in support for LearnDash, Tutor LMS and LifterLMS. With any other course or membership plugin, the MediaShield block and shortcode work on its pages, and developers can add custom access rules through the mediashield_can_watch filter.