RealPlayer 10.5, installation, performance, etc.

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by wata
is realplayer going to add stretch support, i hate black border on the left and right screen

Hmm, not sure I understand the problem. RealPlayer has always supported full screen with stretch. Ctrl-3 is the keyboard shortcut to change to full screen.

[wata]

i know realplayer support fullscreen but not with stretch option
play a video with 352x288 resolution fullscreen will result in black bar on left and right, i can't find any option to stretch the picture to cover the whole screen

[karl_lillevold]

Okay, I understand now. You would like an option to change the display aspect ratio (AR) for a video that might have been encoded with an incorrect display AR.

This is because 352x288 is not 4:3, which your computer screen is. Unfortunately, RealPlayer does not have this option, but there are a few ways to do it:

0) It would have been best to encode the video with the correct display AR in the first place, either resize down to 352x264 or 320x240, or increase the size to 384x288. When the output size is larger than input, Producer will not actually resize, but encode at 352x288 and set a flag so the player displays at 384x288.

1) transmux RM file to MKV. Then use Matroska Shell Extension GUI to change the Display AR to 384x288.

2) hex-edit the RM file and edit 352 to 384. RealPlayer will then fill your screen.

Ideally, RealPlayer should have been able to adjust AR on the fly. Media Player Classic, which can also play RM files with RealPlayer installed, has many features to adjust display properties like AR, offset, and zoom.

[el divx]

@karl_lillevold: Every time I try to load a windows media file, the player crashes. Can you explain it? Oh, and I am using realplayer 10 gold.

[karl_lillevold]

el divx: sorry, I do not know what is wrong. It works for me, and I do not work on the WM plugin, nor do I frequently use RealPlayer to play WM. However, if you PM me the latest crash<n>.log in
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Real\RealPlayer\ErrorLogs
I will file a bug report.

[wata]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
2) hex-edit the RM file and edit 352 to 384. RealPlayer will then fill your screen.

Ideally, RealPlayer should have been able to adjust AR on the fly. Media Player Classic, which can also play RM files with RealPlayer installed, has many features to adjust display properties like AR, offset, and zoom. [/B]

part 2 is the easier for me, i have lots of video, however can't find the ascii to change 352 to 384, so which offset to modify the hex

ps: i am using mpc for most of the realmedia but some clips i would like to adjust the contast with realplayer limit video controls

[karl_lillevold]

wata: it's not ASCII text, but search for VIDORV40, the two numbers after this, are width and height, for instance:

000000d0h: 00 22 00 00 00 22 56 49 44 4F 52 56 34 30 01 60 ; ."..."VIDORV40.`
352 = 160h, so change 160h to 180h, and all should be well. Well, at least it will now fill the screen and display at the correct AR. I would also recommend D-C's RMVB shell extension.. Not as advanced as the Matroska Shell extension, but it will show you the basic properties of an RM file, including the display size that you just changed.

[el divx]

@karl_lillevold: Hey there, I managed to resolve this. Instead of trying to reinstall RealPlayer 10, I installed RealOne Player 2 and I started downloading all the updates except RealPlayer 10 until I had installed all that were available for RealOne Player 2 and after a reboot it was working perfectly, and without any problem on WM files. Then, I installed RealPlayer 10 it through the update system of RealOne Player 2, and bingo, it works! I've also put the latest updates and even the ogg plugins and works without any problem!

[iradic]

why does real player wants to sign-in no mattar if i choose "i have no internet connection" ?

not all my comps are connected...

[Blkbird]

Has RealOne Enterprise Desktop been updated to RealPlayer 10 Enterprise Desktop? If no, is it going to happen any soon?

[hellfred]

Hi Karl_lillevold

I just want to mention that on my WinXP Home SP1, RealPlayer 10 Gold still has problems with full screen toggeld by pressing F9 (Theater mode) and then Ctrl+3 (or was it Alt+3).
Desktop disappears and is replaced by a black screen. Turning of fullscrenn/theater mode or switching to another application does not work. Only way out is to kill RealPlayer via TaskManager.

As that system is not connected to the internet I could not update the player.

Hellfred

[karl_lillevold]

blkbird: I think the only upgrade has been to include the codecs, but I will check.

hellfred: you have Win98, right? Which video card? The techniques RealPlayer uses for optimized video playback (overlay) are pretty standard DirectShow methods, so when there is a problem like this, it is in most cases a problem in the video card driver. In some cases, with known driver bugs, RealPlayer uses some work-arounds, but it is hard to keep track of all bugs in older video cards. You can try the slider for Video Card Compatibility in Preferences->Hardware, and see if any other position than far left makes the problem go away.

[hellfred]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
blkbird: I think the only upgrade has been to include the codecs, but I will check.

hellfred: you have Win98, right? Which video card? The techniques RealPlayer uses for optimized video playback (overlay) are pretty standard DirectShow methods, so when there is a problem like this, it is in most cases a problem in the video card driver. In some cases, with known driver bugs, RealPlayer uses some work-arounds, but it is hard to keep track of all bugs in older video cards. You can try the slider for Video Card Compatibility in Preferences->Hardware, and see if any other position than far left makes the problem go away.

I have acdess to two different machines: One old PIII-550MHz with Windows98, which is mine, and one P4-3.06GHz HT running WinXP SP1 (see message above).
The later one is mainly used for encoding during night time but there i also happen to have the problem with video fullscreen.
I do can watch the video in fullscreen, but only when i switch to theater mode and ask for zoom factor 2. As the two time source width is wider than screen width, the image is just zoomed to fit on the screen (->"fullscreen"). Using the icon or shortcut for fullscreen will result in the black output discribed above. If it is an driver issue, then it must be in the special way RealPlayer activates the direct show output, which must somehow differ from the way the direct show output is triggered when using factor 2.

Hellfred

/Edit: It is getting stranger. I can use Ctrl+3 to get into full screen mode during playback sucessfully, but while viewing AVIs.
When i try to switch into fullscreen while playing one of my home made RV10, I get the black screen.
My home made files were done with the beta of helix producer, 640x384, HE-AAC @ 64, RV10 @ 600, new RC, using YSRealAnime pre2.

[karl_lillevold]

RealPlayer is doing things differently wrt overlay surfaces when it's playing RealVideo vs AVI files, so I am not surprised it behaves differently.

1) For recent ATI cards (Radeon 8xxx and above), RealPlayer uses a h/w based postfilter (DVPF). This is not doing anything for RV9/10, but still the same pipeline is being used for video mem cpy, and has sometimes caused problems, but only with older Catalyst drivers, I think. Do your systems have ATI Radeon video cards?
You can disable DVPF with this reg key:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RealNetworks\RealMediaSDK\10.0\Preferences\VideoBoost\DisableHWPostFilter]
@="1"


2) For RealVideo a triple-buffer scheme is used to avoid tearing. I think DirectShow based players used a similar scheme. You can disable this by moving the video card h/w compatibility slider to the middle. Please try this.

EDIT: reg key : 6.0 -> 10.0

[hellfred]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
RealPlayer is doing things differently wrt overlay surfaces when it's playing RealVideo vs AVI files, so I am not surprised it behaves differently.

1) For recent ATI cards (Radeon 8xxx and above), RealPlayer uses a h/w based postfilter (DVPF). This is not doing anything for RV9/10, but still the same pipeline is being used for video mem cpy, and has sometimes caused problems, but only with older Catalyst drivers, I think. Do your systems have ATI Radeon video cards?
You can disable DVPF with this reg key:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RealNetworks\RealMediaSDK\6.0\Preferences\VideoBoost\DisableHWPostFilter]
@="1"


2) For RealVideo a triple-buffer scheme is used to avoid tearing. I think DirectShow based players used a similar scheme. You can disable this by moving the video card h/w compatibility slider to the middle. Please try this.

1.)

The card in this machine is a special ATI card:

Medion RADEON 9800XL
Driver from ATI Technologies Inc.
Date: 12.08.2003
Version: 6.14.10.6378

I will try to get a newer dirver. Switching the DV postfilter on and off did not do the trick. I am still unable to go to fullscreen directly.

2.)
RealPlayer -> Tools -> Preferences.. -> Hardware -> Video Card Compatibility -> middel position

Fullscreen is finally working with RV10 videos :-)
Do I have a chance to get the triple-buffering working with the latest driver or by changing the Output settings in MediaPlayerClassic. Aren't those gloabal and can harm the output of RealPlayer?
In the moment they are set like this:
DirectShow Video: VMR9 (renderless)
RealMedia Video: DirectX 9
VMR7/9 & DirectX 7/9 settings: Use regular offscreen plain surfaces

74 MB for a ATI dirver. That is not ture, is it?

[karl_lillevold]

that's a pretty old ATI driver you have, and I think this driver had a bug in the DVPF postfilter, so I am surprised the reg key did not work. Ah, I think the reg location changed in RealPlayer 10. Replace "6.0" with "10.0" in the reg key and try again... Remember to move the slider back to fully optimized...

EDIT: Triple-buffering should work just fine in Media Player Classic, no matter what you set the h/w compatibility to in RealPlayer 10. MPC does not use the RealMedia rendering engine, when it is set to DirectShow for RealMedia.

[hellfred]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
that's a pretty old ATI driver you have, and I think this driver had a bug in the DVPF postfilter, so I am surprised the reg key did not work. Ah, I think the reg location changed in RealPlayer 10. Replace "6.0" with "10.0" in the reg key and try again... Remember to move the slider back to fully optimized...

EDIT: Triple-buffering should work just fine in Media Player Classic, no matter what you set the h/w compatibility to in RealPlayer 10. MPC does not use the RealMedia rendering engine, when it is set to DirectShow for RealMedia.

As this card was specially made for the manufactor Medion, i only have little choice concerning dirvers:

ATI
Grafik Treiber
6.14.10.6378
Win XP
Bereitstellungsdatum 18.12.2003

or

ATI
Grafik Treiber
6.14.10.6378
Win 2000/Win 98SE/Win ME/Win XP
Bereitstellungsdatum 17.11.2003
Bisherige Downloads 37612

(http://www1.medion.de/downloads/?op=...imageField.y=0)
So actually I just get the dirver v6.14.10.6378 from the manufactor

Do you think i can use an generic crystal driver from ATI?

CATALYST Windows XP 4.4 - Driver Download
(http://www.ati.de/support/drivers/wi...8&submit=GO%21)

Hellfred

EDIT: The Releas notes of the 4.4 Catalyst driver claim to support the whole 9800 family. I hope they did not forget the 9800XL when stating this.

[Valky]

I just upgraded my player to this newer one and noticed one thing. In RealPlayer the picture somehow much more colourful and sharpen than in mpc. Why is that? It's almost like my hard efforts for removing the rainbow effects in old Fawlty Tower backups are back when using RealPlayer to watch these clips?

[bond]

lo karl
i just read that the new realplayer seems to support .mp4 (with mpeg-4 video) playback again,
someone reported some problems with it tough here, maybe you want to have a look or point someone from real to it

[karl_lillevold]

That's right: RealPlayer 10 now again auto-updates with an MPEG-4 video decoder, no longer Envivio's though.

Re: reported problems on SourceForge
The PAR problem, which is discussed in the Helix Player forum on Helix Community, is being worked on. I can not see any problems with A/V sync on my system, and I do not know which XviD settings our decoder can not decode. If the person having these problems reports them on Helix Community and includes some test files to reproduce, someone will look into it. Thanks.