I'm using a popular php video-sharing script for my web site. I've modded it so vistors must pay to view a video, however the path to the thumbnail appears on the html page in the View Source code, which is very similar to the path to the actual video. Is there any way to hide the path code?
A good idea here is to have a script that serves the thumbnails from their id's. Hire a developer (would offer myself but I'm busy) to get you to be able to link to something like http://example.com/thumb/349.png (served using a simple php script with .htaccess for SEO purposes) which will get the appropriate file by matching the provided id (eg: 349) to the thumbnail location for that video as given in the database and then outputting the file at that location. This way, everything works the same except your links are now nothing like the video links. After that, just get the developer to modify all references to thumbnails in the code of the script to use the new URLs. Perhaps a bit technical if you're not into computing, but just show that to a programmer and they'll know what you're after. Admittably this would take time but it's probably just a find, examine what's been found & then replace job.
If users must pay to see the video why are you even hiding the path? You should have the system check if a user has paid when the try to go to the url with the video and redirect them to a different page if they have not paid.
The problem with that is that the system he's got for payment might not support it. My solution will work pretty much regardless of how he handles the payments.
He'd have to code up some form of access control anyways. Kinda like if you got a paypal IPN script that tracks subscriptions, can store the information in a database of your own design for valid user tracking.