RealNetworks Opens SMIL Implementation

Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks just released the source code to their SMIL 2.0 implementation (along with JPEG, GIF, PNG, and WBMP implementations) as part of the Helix Community initiative, under the OSI-approved RPSL. Some neat tricks to do with the code: superimpose images on top of video, or transition effects between videos, using standard W3C-defined markup. More tech details in the Helix community datatype project page, or look at the SMIL production topics page. A precompiled release with this code will be coming out very soon."

Comments

realone

[Pompatus]

Does this mean I can play real audio/real video files without realone? I hate installing that thing on my computer. However, alot of stuff is only available in that format, such as live audio of nfl games and clips from my friends local hip hop group (www.psychoward.com, yes it uses flash too, I tried to tell him, but nobody listens)

Re:realone

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, I thought SVG was an XML-based type of Flash? Now I'm confused.

Re:realone

[jd142]

Realone is a lot better than the previous version of RealPlayer. RealPlayer made it incredibly difficult to stop it from loading on boot. When you went into preferences to turn it off, you got a message that sounded like turning off the startcenter would make your computer stop working correctly. The start center was also responsible for random crashes.

We went through a period at work where the soultion to every crash was to remove the start center.

But as I said, Real One is a lot better. Now the only problem is that they really push you to the non-free version on their website.

On a side note... (a little OT)

[Jerk City Troll]

Is it just me or does Real make it unreasonably difficult to download their player? It seems to me that if you want to encourage proliferation of your media format, you don't want to force users to go through a dozen or so clicks on your web site and then ask for a credit card number when issuing a trial! Since Real stopped offering a free player, I no longer bother with the format. Dealing with all the players in nonsense enough, I do not need the added hassle or even financial burden of paying for another one. You might want to consider encouraging your friend to switch to something a little more accessible. Of course, this all could have changed in the past couple months. As far as I remember however, Real required payment for a media player (absurd, I don't even pay for an OS).

Presentation software

[smallpaul]

SMIL+SVG is the most logical output format and interchange format for Open source presentation programs. It would be terrific if they could get together to turn Mozilla into a standards-based multimedia presentation delivery platform.

Rember RealNetworks has only official *NIX player

[benwaggoner]

Folks seem to have a lot of bitterness towards RealNetworks. I certainly agree the download process is self-defeatingly difficult. But of the Big Three propritary formats, RealNetworks is the only one shipping a *NIX player. It's community supported only, but is really pretty good, and they provide downloadable updates to the latest.

Real also provides authoring tools for Linux, albeit command-line only.

Also, the Real codecs are really quite nice. RealVideo 9 is second only to Windows Media Video 9 in terms of compression efficiency, and performs better on lower end machines. The audio codecs are getting a little long in the tooth, but are still more than adequate for real-time streaming applications.

Re:Rember RealNetworks has only official *NIX play

[31 Flavas]

Also, the Real codecs are really quite nice. RealVideo 9 is second only to Windows Media Video 9 in terms of compression efficiency, and performs better on lower end machines. The audio codecs are getting a little long in the tooth, but are still more than adequate for real-time streaming applications.

Check out doom9.org forums, specifically, the "new A/V format" forum. THE Senior Codec Engineer of RealNetworks posts daily there. He does it on his own free time and even lets the forum readers in on pre-release fuctions and code.

Specifically, EHQ encode mode, RealAudio 5.1 audio, and the Animation DropDupe Pre-filter are all new capabilites being discussed there. EHQ mode gives upto 30% improved compression efficiencey and the DropDupe pre-filter provides for variable frame rate encodeing of animation/cartoons, that plays back as if encoded at 24/30 fps, so since repeated frames are droped instead of being encoded, you save diskspace.

The cream of the crop, so to say, though would be the DirectShow filter for RealMedia.

Also a lot of discussion has gone on about the marketing department of RealNetworks being utterly retarded, which from as a result of the forum and internal pressure, has been made to relize a lot of their faults. Version 3 of the RealOne player we are told will be really nice (as in getting rid of ads and such).

Re:SVG is the "Flash replacement"

[killthiskid]

I have to do a plug for a free service I've used Texterity. I had a series of very complex PDF files that were saved from PageMaker to PC format PDFs under Macintosh. I was unable to open the file in Illistrator on the PC, and I needed to get the document in a form I could use from with XSL:FO so that I could make it part of a process that created a PDF from a predefine document that added some data and formatting. Using thier service, I was able to take the SVG they created from the PDF and included as an inline SVG object in an FO XML doc which I then served up real time as a PDF file online.

PDF forms dynamically filled with data using FOP from the Apache project!

The really cool thing was the seamless conversion of the fonts involved into glyphs in the SVG file. DAMN! They did good. Check 'em out. Disclaimer: I am in no way involved with them other than being a user of their great free service.