Player for RealMedia?

[Ghitulescu]

I'm looking for a player, hopefully freeware, that knows how to play RM, RA, RAM, RMVB etc.
Features:

No installer (for God sake I know how to use WinZip or WinRar)
it should not alter the essential parts of the system (like RealPlayer or any TrialWare do)
does not require Admin rights (why they need this? well maybe because all users I know do not have a secondary restricted account - and of course these players need to take control over your system)
does not modify the file association
does not install additionally scamware or trojans (again RealPlayer or TrialWare)
Windows compatible

I'm not aware of any such player. Any hints?
May be the manga/anime lovers have an idea, since the Eastern love for whatever reason the RMVB format ;)

[click2]

Choices;

1. Official Realplayer
You sound like you're against this, fair enough

2. RealAlternative
Installs the very core files from the official realplayer package. No nagging, minimal impact on your system, everything is wrapped through DirectShow so things play in MPC or WMP.

3. Mplayer with binary codecs
Drag and drop install. 100% compatible (because it uses dlls taken from official RealPlayer)

4. Ffdshow
There's an experimental rv40 decoder, but no cooker audio support, so that's not 100% compatibility. Probably couple this with the gabest / guliverkli2 realmedia splitter. Not really recommended, although hopefully this alternative decoder will become more reliable in the future.

5. VLC 0.99, and 1.00 release candidates
Drag and drop install. Uses the experimental rv40 decoder too, but it's a little less hassle.

[Dark Shikari]

4. Ffdshow
There's an experimental rv40 decoder, but no cooker audio support, so that's not 100% compatibility. Probably couple this with the gabest / guliverkli2 realmedia splitter. Not really recommended, although hopefully this alternative decoder will become more reliable in the future.

5. VLC 0.99, and 1.00 release candidates
Drag and drop install. Uses the experimental rv40 decoder too, but it's a little less hassle.I haven't heard of any problems with the decoder you claim to be "experimental." How many months does it have to be committed for before it is no longer "experimental"? 12? 24? 36?

[click2]

Personal experience.. on my system, it judders and blocks. It's very noticeable when compared to realalternative or mplayer with w32codecs. Maybe experimental isn't the right word, though.

Using: Conroe E2220, VLC 1.00 RC2, RealAlternative 1.90, XP32.

[Dark Shikari]

Personal experience.. on my system, it juddersProbably because there's practically no assembly optimizations for it, since nobody is insane enough to try to optimize such a braindead video format.

[Ghitulescu]

Choices;

1. Official Realplayer
You sound like you're against this, fair enough

2. RealAlternative
Installs the very core files from the official realplayer package. No nagging, minimal impact on your system, everything is wrapped through DirectShow so things play in MPC or WMP.

3. Mplayer with binary codecs
Drag and drop install. 100% compatible (because it uses dlls taken from official RealPlayer)

4. Ffdshow
There's an experimental rv40 decoder, but no cooker audio support, so that's not 100% compatibility. Probably couple this with the gabest / guliverkli2 realmedia splitter. Not really recommended, although hopefully this alternative decoder will become more reliable in the future.

5. VLC 0.99, and 1.00 release candidates
Drag and drop install. Uses the experimental rv40 decoder too, but it's a little less hassle.

Choice 1 - I knew it, I am against it
Choice 2 - I cannot install it at work (not admin)
Choice 3 - I'll check it right now, I knew it as a linux program
Choice 4 - has no own codecs, thus the need to install codecs beyond user rights
Choice 5 - seems Ok, I'm using 0.97 I think, comes with its own codecs, but I knew about the new version and it seems that only RA are decoded- maybe I'm wrong

[click2]

Probably because there's practically no assembly optimizations for it, since nobody is insane enough to try to optimize such a braindead video format.

There seem to be plenty of spare cpu cycles, so i don't know what's up. Did ffdshow ever get around to cook support? Maybe it's lucky rm's not as prevalent as it once was, doesn't seem to be used much outside of LQ anime recodes.

[Ghitulescu]

Mplayer copied, ran, and Ok at least with the samples I had.
Now I have to find a skin/GUI since I miss the controls ;)

Thanx all of you.

PS: I used rp9win32codecs.zip for RealMedia.

SMPlayer portable is what I needed.

[tetsuo55]

Probably because there's practically no assembly optimizations for it, since nobody is insane enough to try to optimize such a braindead video format.Here is what kostya said(he wrote the RV30 and RV40 decoders)(ordered from new to old)

got RV40 and RV30 finally working more or less as supposed (some garbage still occurs on some B-frames, but mostly both decoders produce watchable video)

Some notes about performance:

PPC G4 1.42GHz — on par
Celeron 600MHz (inside ASUS Eee) — significantly slower (2 minutes of the same source decoded in 64 and 82 seconds by binary and native decoders respectively)
When I switch motion compensation functions from C implementations to optimised H.264 counterparts (they are slightly different so the picture quality gets worse) native decoder becomes faster than binary one by several percents on x86 and even faster on PPC. Conclusion: if you want fast decoding then submit SIMD versions of motion compensation functions.

Hereby I declare that my RV40 decoder changed its status from “Well, it’s better than nothing” to “Good enough”. While there are still problems with chroma and jitter in B-frames due to wrong motion vectors prediction, luma decoding is bitexact on I- and P-frames.
I hope to weed them out and have decoding enabled in FFmpeg before next year. Maybe RV30 too.

That B-Frame jitter is the problem click2 talked about

[roozhou]

I haven't heard of any problems with the decoder you claim to be "experimental." How many months does it have to be committed for before it is no longer "experimental"? 12? 24? 36?

Problem 1: Deblocking is still problematic. I've found no samples being deblocked correctly by ffrv40 so far.
Problem 2: Does not support PAR.
Problem 3: Wrong pts and jitter with b-frame in ffdshow (OK in MPlayer).
Problem 4: 30% slower than drvc.dll and no mt support.

Probably because there's practically no assembly optimizations for it, since nobody is insane enough to try to optimize such a braindead video format.

IIRC RV40 ranks #1 among online videos in Asia. There must be some reason for a "braindead" video format to be so popular.

[Dark Shikari]

Problem 1: Deblocking is still problematic. I've found no samples being deblocked correctly by ffrv40 so far.
Problem 2: Does not support PAR.
Problem 3: Wrong pts and jitter with b-frame in ffdshow (OK in MPlayer).
Problem 4: 30% slower than drvc.dll and no mt support.Last I heard he had fixed deblocking in B-frames. P/I frames at a minimum are bit-exact.
IIRC RV40 ranks #1 among online videos in Asia. There must be some reason for a "braindead" video format to be so popular.Because in general, people are complete morons?

[roozhou]

Last I heard he had fixed deblocking in B-frames. P/I frames at a minimum are bit-exact.
There is still problem in B-frames. It looks very ugly in fade.

Because in general, people are complete morons?

No, they are just lazy.

[click2]

No, they are just lazy.

I'd suggest it's because of RealAnime (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/RealAnime), and how easy it is to mangle anime into something smaller. Bencos hasn't really been updated to pick up the slack..

[roozhou]

I'd suggest it's because of RealAnime (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/RealAnime), and how easy it is to mangle anime into something smaller. Bencos hasn't really been updated to pick up the slack..

In China ppl use Easy RealMedia Producer (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=73228). So far there is no equivalent tool for x264.

[Ghitulescu]

In China ppl use Easy RealMedia Producer (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=73228). So far there is no equivalent tool for x264.

Maybe it's time for someone to explain them that's really stupid to encode into a closed commercial format, supported only by a hand of players (and my Nokia ;)).

[roozhou]

Maybe it's time for someone to explain them that's really stupid to encode into a closed commercial format, supported only by a hand of players (and my Nokia ;)).

Most portable players in China have better rmvb support(higher bitrate and resolution) than other formats.

[Midzuki]

2. RealAlternative

Installs the very core files from the official realplayer package. No nagging, minimal impact on your system, everything is wrapped through DirectShow so things play in MPC or WMP.

If the only goal is the DirectShow-based playback of RealMedia,
one just needs to copy the files listed below to their system32 folder and then run the command
"regsvr32 RealMediaSplitter.ax"
--- there really is no need to do a full install of RealAlternative.

14_43260.dll
28_83260.dll
atrc.dll
cook.dll
cook3260.dll
ddnt3260.dll
dnet3260.dll
drv1.dll
drv2.dll
drvc.dll
hxltcolor.dll
pncrt.dll
pndx5032.dll
raac.dll
ralf.dll
RealMediaSplitter.ax
rv10.dll
rv20.dll
rv30.dll
rv40.dll
sipr.dll
sipr3260.dll

(total size = 3,122,161 bytes)


I regularly use Uniextract on various "setup.exes" in order to obtain
only the files that my computer really needs. :)

HTH.

[roozhou]

If you have ffdshow installed, only cook.dll, sipr.dll and drvc.dll are needed.

[Midzuki]

I stand corrected. :o The DLLs cook3260, sipr3260, hxltcolor and pndx5032 are redundant, or unused. However the runtime-library "pncrt" still is required by the RealAudio codec(s).

Anyway, me too thinks the original rv40 decoder is better than the one from libavcodec. :p

[roozhou]

I stand corrected. :o The DLLs cook3260, sipr3260, hxltcolor and pndx5032 are redundant, or unused. However the runtime-library "pncrt" still is required by the RealAudio codec(s).

Anyway, me too thinks the original rv40 decoder is better than the one from libavcodec. :p

Is pncrt.dll identical to msvcrt.dll? You can modify the IAT of those dlls which require pncrt.

The libavcodec RV40 decoder is still buggy and slow. They won't give you correct output if b-frames are used. Avoid using ffrv40 until Kotya finally complete it.

[clsid]

RealMediaSplitter explicitly checks for pncrt.dll, so you definately need it along with the codecs.

[roozhou]

RealMediaSplitter explicitly checks for pncrt.dll, so you definately need it along with the codecs.

Well, I cannot find any "pncrt" inside RealMediaSplitter.ax.

[clsid]

My mistake. It's in the Media Player Classic code. That supports streaming, something that the standalone splitter can not do.

[roozhou]

My mistake. It's in the Media Player Classic code. That supports streaming, something that the standalone splitter can not do.

Again I cannot find "pncrt" or "PNCRT" in MPC-HC, neither ansi nor unicode.

[clsid]

I've checked, and it actually depends on pnen3260.dll for streaming.

The following legacy codecs depend on pncrt.dll:
14_43260.dll, 28_83260.dll, cook.dll, ddnt3260.dll, ra32clv1.dll

[Midzuki]

The ANSI-string "PNCRT.dll" is found in the following DLLs that I have just checked:

rv20, rv40, sipr, cook, 28_83260, drvc, dnet3260.

clsid wrote:
I've checked, and it actually depends on pnen3260.dll for streaming.

Thanks for the clarification.

P.S.:
Apologies if I have made this thread start going "off-topic". :o

[roozhou]

I've checked, and it actually depends on pnen3260.dll for streaming.

The following legacy codecs depend on pncrt.dll:
14_43260.dll, 28_83260.dll, cook.dll, ddnt3260.dll, ra32clv1.dll

If any dll needs pncrt.dll, open it with hex-editor, search for ansi string "pncrt.dll" and change it to "msvcrt\0\0\0", and it no longer needs.

[clsid]

A huge waste of time imho.

[roozhou]

A huge waste of time imho.
It doesn't need much time because only a few files need to be patched. And it saves disk space and memory.

[4Dude]

I recommend REAL PLAYER 8 (Last good version before AOL bought them and ruined the product)

I have rp8 and i love it!! (I tried the next release and it sucked pond water!! (AOL has a good record of ruining good software))

Heres where to get version 8 if you wanna try it http://www.oldversion.com/RealPlayer.html (Scroll down to where you see "Realplayer 8")

If it doesnt satisfy you,you can always uninstall....

Interestingly i can play SOME realmedia content with WMP9!


Good luck!